Dissing the CBO Is Just Political Theater

Congress' scorekeeper isn't perfect, but it plays a very important role.

Mar 16, 2017 | By Ryan Alexander | 6 min read | Print Article

Originally published on March 15, 2017 in U.S. News & World Report

Lots of Americans are learning about a powerful but little talked about independent Congressional agency, the Congressional Budget Office.

This agency is charged with providing the budget score – or cost – of legislation. There are certain rules about how legislation is scored, such as over what term and what can or can’t be counted, but much of the scoring comes down to economic projections. In other words, CBO looks at how the legislation will play out in the economy.

People are hearing about the Congressional Budget Office because of the dozens of headlines about its score of the American Health Care Act, the bill now moving through the House of Representatives to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). There are three numbers emerging from this score that are dominating the news: the 14 million people who are predicted to lose health insurance next year if the bill is enacted; the 24 million people who lose health insurance over 10 years; and the $337 billion the plan is projected to save taxpayers.

But the funny thing is, whomever you are listening to, you probably won’t hear them talk about all three numbers at once or even in the same order. House Republicans and other supporters of the bill criticize the projections of Americans who will lose insurance, arguing the coverage numbers are just plain wrong and that Congressional Budget Office estimates of existing coverage are wrong, too. They also flag the lack of dynamic scoring analysis, which would take into account increased economic activity from the bill. (The Congressional Budget Office explained that providing a dynamic score was not possible in the short timeframe the House gave it to produce the analysis).

It’s also worth pointing out that Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall was selected in 2015 in part because of his support for dynamic scoring. Ironically, he was picked by now-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

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At the same time, many of those supporters of the plan are quick to point out the $337 billion in savings predicted in the score, without acknowledging that reduced coverage numbers make up much of the savings. On the other side, Democrats and other critics of the proposal can’t stop talking about the insurance numbers and conveniently ignore the deficit savings.

Scoring legislation is hard work, and frequently scores come under criticism from those who want a different answer. This isn’t a partisan issue. The Congressional Budget Office is the budgetary referee. And just like in sports, referees get criticized by whomever the call goes against.

At my organization, Taxpayers for Common Sense, we’ve seen plenty of times the Congressional budget scorekeepers have gotten things wrong, and plenty of times they’ve gotten it right. We’ve documented how they consistently underestimate the cost of recent farm bills, and they did it again with the 2014 editions. They underestimated the costs of contractor supports in Iraq.

On the other hand, the projections related to the massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were mostly on target: the cost exceeded the predicted $787 billion score by less than 7 percent.

Accuracy and impartiality are critical, and my organization has been as loud a voice as any in pushing the Congressional Budget Office to improve. In fact, I would like to see more analysis of what scores were right and what were wrong and why. That way, the Congressional Budget Office can learn.

But despite being imperfect, the Congressional Budget Office is a critical institution and one of the strongest elements of the 1974 budget reforms that led to its creation. Before that, Congress had to rely the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the Executive Office of the President, for cost estimates of policy proposals. Congress understandably decided that it wanted its own independent budget scorekeeper, instead of relying on what President Richard Nixon (or any subsequent president) was telling them the score was.

Budget scores provide critical information to both lawmakers and the public about the economic and fiscal consequences of policies. And it is these consequences – not the names of the bills, not the lofty intentions of the lawmakers, not the number of pages or lack thereof in the bill – that should be the basis of lawmakers’ decisions. Making policy is difficult – and despite politicians’ promises that they can provide more services for less money, that is only rarely the case.

We need to know the cost – fiscal, human, and economic – of the decisions Congress is making. We should absolutely push the Congressional Budget Office to improve, but simply dismissing scores without evidence is pure political theater.