CBO: Too Often The Numbers Do Lie

Your local weather forecaster has better odds of being right than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  Despite its lousy prediction record, the media continues to tout the CBO's estimates as unimpeachable numbers not subject to skepticism.  Even a meterologist knows better. 

The budget office issues an annual deficit prediction 12-months ahead of the fiscal year, yet it errs by billions of dollars.  Its yearly economic growth models are just as inaccurate. CBO predicted 3.2 percent GDP from 2010-2016.  Actual GDP performance was 2.1 percent, a yawning disparity.

Notwithstanding its slipshod record, the CBO claims to be "strictly objective and impartial" in its role of producing 'independent' analysis of issues to support the Congressional budget process. Lawmakers are supposed to look to the CBO to provide the cost to taxpayers of proposed legislation.
 
From its beginning in 1975, the CBO has clung to antiquated scoring methodologies that skew the results and raise questions about the accuracy of its forecasts.  Like many government agencies, the CBO has resisted calls to change its calculus to fit today's economic realities. 

Many of the CBO's problems can be traced to its founding.  The creation of the CBO was a Democratic political ploy to wrest control of the budget process from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which reported to President Nixon at the time.

With lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 birthing its own budget agency to weaken the OMB and to jigger cost estimates to fit its agenda.  Democrats named a director, who built a team of party loyalists. 

Since its infancy, the CBO has been the epitome of the Deep State, a reference to government employees who influence federal agency policies to reflect their own political views.  Even if the media uses the words "non-partisan" to describe the CBO, it serves its masters in Congress.

By its own admission, the CBO "consults" with members of Congress before it produces its estimates. Lawmakers can and do manipulate assumptions that the CBO bakes into its projections and forecasts on legislation. So much for an unbiased, nonpartisan estimate. 

Take the CBO's infamous forecast of the 10-year price tag of Obamacare.  Shilling for the proposal, President Obama vowed the legislation's price tag would be $940 billion. Magically, the CBO crunched the numbers and guesstimated the cost would be $938 billion.

That was in 2010.  Two years later the CBO did a "whoops" and restated its estimate.  In 2012, the ten-year cost had escalated to $1.76 trillion.  It turned out many of the original assumptions in the formal estimate were provided by one of Obamacare's architects, Jonathon Gruber.

When Republicans launched a legislative battle to repeal Obamacare this year, the CBO stepped in and effectively handed the Democrats a sledgehammer to smash the effort.  The CBO calculated 23 million people would lose health coverage in the insurance exchanges under the GOP plan.

The media used the figures to tar Republicans and scare Americans. No journalists bothered to look at the CBO assumptions. Agency bean-counters inflated the forecast for enrollment in Obamacare exchanges to make the losses appear larger than realistically expected over a 10-year horizon.   

With tax reform blinking on Washington's legislative radar, the CBO has dredged up findings that match the Democrat narrative of exploding deficits.  After examining the House and Senate tax plans, the CBO has projected 10-year deficits totalling $1.4 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively.

The same Democrats who applauded President Obama's $1 trillion budget deficit in a single year, are appalled and shocked at the estimated shortfall caused by tax reform.  However, the CBO's flawed analysis does not assume the reforms will fuel economic growth that will increase tax revenues.

The charade has lasted too long.

Virginia Representative Morgan Griffith and two of his colleagues recently offered legislation to abolish the Budget Analysis Division at the CBO.  "Too often predictions made by the CBO turn out to be far off the mark," Griffith told the House in pleading his case. 

Hidebound members of the House rebuffed the measure.  The swamp takes comfort in sustaining bureaucracies, particularly those that serve its purposes at the expense of taxpayers.

The CBO and its 250 analysts, economists and budget specialists have failed to publish accurate forecasts Congress can rely on in making decisions.  Axing the CBO will remove an obstacle to Washington reform. And it will have the added benefit of lowering the water level in the swamp.