Republicans move to boost CBO budget amid controversy

Frequent target in health care debate would get $ 2M more

Republicans want to give the CBO a raise.

You read that right. The Congressional Budget Office, accused of being incompetent in recent weeks by basically every senior Republican including President Trump, has been offered a $ 2 million budget increase by House Republicans, its biggest boost in years. And that is in fact less than the $ 3.4 million budget increase Trump requested for the office.

The CBO has taken center stage in the battle over health care still gripping the Republican led- Congress. The non- partisan budget office — responsible for providing cost and impact analysis of major legislation — has offered reports concluding that Republican bills to repeal and replace Obamacare would reduce the number of Americans with health insurance by more than 20 million over the next decade.

Republicans have responded that CBO estimates are wrong, noting the office significantly overestimated the number of people who would get coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Last week, the White House tweeted a slick video arguing that “CBO inaccurately estimates health coverage.”

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?” in a May interview with the Washington Examiner.

After CBO estimated Wednesday evening that the Senate plan to repeal Obamacare could expand the ranks of uninsured Americans by 32 million people, the White House again dismissed it.

“We continue to believe that CBO’s methodology is flawed, and this score fails to take into account the President’s full plan, which includes a replacement for Obamacare and administrative actions to reduce costs and expand access to quality, affordable care,” said the White House statement.

Yet the House Appropriations Committee at the end of June approved a spending bill that would boost the CBO budget from $ 46.5 million to $ 48.5 million, the agency’s biggest raise in years. CBO’s annual budget has hovered a little more than or a little less than $ 46 million since 2014, and it was significantly less in 2013 only because of government- wide cuts known as “sequestration.”

“Both sides of the aisle have their occasional differences in opinion with CBO estimates and how they arrive at their conclusions, but at the end of the day it serves an important purpose and needs the appropriate resources to do its job,” said CJ Grover, spokesman for Rep. Kevin Yoder, R- Kan., the chairman of the subcommittee that drafted the spending bill.

CBO Director Keith Hall told lawmakers in June that the funding boost is needed in part to hire more analysts to score the glut of health care proposals Congress is cranking out because “congressional interest remains high in modifying or replacing the Affordable Care Act and changing Medicare or Medicaid.”

CBO also is “anticipating a larger workload associated with ( spending bills) and is aiming to respond to requests for information more quickly,” Hall said. The office also faces a onetime outlay of more than $ 1 million to move its data center out of its current location.