The CBO is technically a nonpartisan agency, but it has historically shown a bias toward a left-wing economic worldview.
Imagine there is a group of people in Congress with more influence over whether laws are passed and rules are changed, than any official committee or subcommittee in the House and Senate.
Unfortunately, you don’t have to imagine this scenario. It’s part of the sad reality of trying to govern in Washington under the influence of the Congressional Budget Office . In 2010, the CBO was critical to the passage of Obamacare. It gave credence to White House claims that the law would lower the deficit and boost the economy. Then, in 2014, after the law was implemented, the CBO had to update its projections. The new analysis claimed the law would result in 2.5 million fewer jobs by 2024. Using these updated projections, Republican staff on the Senate Budget Committee estimated Obamacare would increase the deficit by $131 billion.
And just last week, the CBO delivered another absurd estimate of a common-sense, market-oriented reform in health care. This time it was the Trump administration’s proposed rule to ban drug manufacturers from giving secret rebates to pharmacy benefit managers. Instead rebates would be passed to patients at the pharmacy counter.
The CBO report, by contrast, posits almost no behavior changes from Part D plans or pharmacy benefit managers. It also assumes — without explaining its reasoning — that correcting the perverse incentives in Medicare Part D would not have spillover benefits to other markets. In other words, the CBO report assumes the least changes in behavior possible. This is static scoring in a nutshell.
This vigorous competition between outside firms being held accountable for their accuracy would produce better information and projections for lawmakers than the current CBO monopoly.
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