"In the shadows of the Senate’s failure to pass Obamacare repeal, a seemingly inconsequential, but highly revealing vote took place across the Capitol.
Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) offered an amendment to the so-called “minibus” spending bill that would have abolished the Budget Analysis division of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The amendment was defeated by a vote of 309-116;
120 Republicans, over half of the Republican conference, joined a unanimous bloc of Democrats to defeat it. ...CBO’s forecasting deficiencies are not simply limited to health care.
The CBO drastically underestimated the total price tags of the farm bills of 2002 ($137 billion off target) and 2008 ($309 billion off target).
In 2012, when Congress authorized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to auction off spectrum, the CBO vastly undervalued the potential profit to the government at $15 billion over ten years; the first two auctions each brought in close to or more than double that amount.
Referring to an auction in 2015 that brought in roughly $41 billion in revenue and the CBO’s prediction that the auction either wouldn’t happen or would bring in no revenue at all, FCC Commissioner Jennifer Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said, “Our airwaves are extraordinarily valuable but our accounting systems for measuring them in the legislative process (CBO estimates) don’t appear to be fully up to date.”
Congress cannot continue to legislate in good faith when it knows that its own signature source of economic analysis is so deeply flawed.
...And yet, nearly three-quarters of Congress – and over half the Republicans – couldn’t bring themselves to cut 87 employees at a cost of $15 million.
Adding insult to injury, according to Congressman Griffith, the CBO itself scored his amendment as budget-neutral, a bizarre projection for an amendment that directly cuts $15 million..."
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