The Republican Revolution ushered in all manner of congressional budget-cutting in the name of fiscal responsibility and taming government. Then along came Newt Gingrich, who killed both during his reign as speaker in the mid-90s. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, meanwhile, aimed to improve coordination between federal, state, and local governments. Once upon a time, the Office of Technology Assessment provided lawmakers with scientific expertise. In some cases, entire offices have been axed. As for support offices, the Brookings Institution notes that “the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office have lost 45 percent of their combined staffs from 1975 to 2015.” Without independent, nonpartisan, in-house repositories of knowledge, Congress becomes ever more dependent on outside know-it-alls. Committee budgets have been cut, meaning staffs are smaller-and smart staffers decamp for more lucrative gigs the second they have an ounce of experience. Small wonder then that funding for a range of congressional support services has been slashed since the 1970s. Which is saying a lot, given that lawmakers have been chipping away at their own institution’s capacity for decades.Įveryone loves to bash Big Government. The legislative branch of that government, however, would be even less equipped to deal with data and complex analyses than it currently is. Mulvaney is technically correct: You most certainly can have a government without a Congressional Budget Office. Outrage is voiced, chests are thumped-then everybody hunkers down and the show grinds on.īut when officials start taking issue, not with a particular analysis or particular staff members, but with the agency’s very purpose, it’s time to get nervous. Not infrequently, the agency comes out with numbers that one or the other team dislikes.
Of course, politicians being congenital whiners, the CBO takes its share of abuse. Both teams must be able to trust the agency’s neutrality, or its work indeed becomes worthless.
The CBO is supposed to stay above the political fray, serving as an independent, nonpartisan source of analysis. Among those most intimately involved in the selection was then-Representative Tom Price, who gushed of Hall, “His vast understanding of economic and labor market policy will be invaluable to the work of CBO and the important role it will continue to play as Congress seeks to enact policies that support a healthy and growing economy.”īut (with props to Taylor Swift) all that mad love has turned to seriously bad blood, putting Hall and his people in a tough spot. (To be fair, Gingrich has loathed the agency since his days in Congress.)Īll this hating on the CBO is more than a little rich, given that Republicans recruited its current chief, former Bush 43 adviser Keith Hall, just two years ago. The CBO’s time “has come and gone,” Mulvaney suggested to the Washington Examiner in May, ominously noting, “You can have a government without a Congressional Budget Office.” Trump fanboy Newt Gingrich has been peddling a similar message, calling the CBO “corrupt,” “dishonest,” and “disgustingly wrong” and advocating its total abolition. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has been even harsher, dismissing the agency’s relevance altogether. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price grumped that “the CBO report’s coverage numbers defy logic.” “They're sometimes not even very good at adding and subtracting,” he snarked. Miffed by the agency’s initial scoring of the AHCA in March, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt derided the CBO as “notoriously bad” at predicting market outcomes. In response, they have adopted a vigorous kill-the-messenger approach, slamming the folks at the CBO as some combination of incompetent boobs and crafty liberals looking to derail the conservative agenda. Predictably, Republicans both on Capitol Hill and at the White House have been less than thrilled by such estimates.
(23 million? 24 million? So difficult to be precise in these situations.) Every time Republican members send up this or that reform proposal, CBO has to break the bad news that the plan is likely to render tens of millions more Americans uninsured. Haven’t the CBOers suffered enough already? The high-octane health-care battle has been ruining their lives for months now. This seems cruel even by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s cold-blooded standards.
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