Do We Ever Hold CBO Accountable?
On the House floor: how the Congressional Budget Office has been wrong about every major spending forecast for the last twenty years — and the political reason nobody fixes it.
Original by RepThomasMassie on YouTube ↗ · Is this yours? Claim credit →
Transcript
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- the gentleman from Kentucky has recognized for his questions thank you Mr chairman how often does a CBO director come to Congress to testify I'm
- not aware of any time that he has I assume that it's happened but I sure haven't met the gentleman I don't I've never seen him um how many times so
- you've never met him um when did you get a copy of the CBO score just it just came out yesterday
- which is before we were even back in session despite the fact that they've had this bill for several months isn't that crazy I mean we we struggle to get 3 days to
- read a bill here and then on the last day in the last 24 hours the CBO comes up with something to throw everything out of whack intentionally so I I would
- argue would the gentleman yield to me for one no I heard plenty from you earlier no U I'll get I'll get her yield
- to me can somebody fix the audio are you an engineer
- yeah I am now just don't put it so close um you know maybe we should get the CBO director to come to the rules committee
- it's probably not a bad idea um how is the how how is the CBO director hired I understand that it is
- with the speaker and speaker protim are the ones that make the decision to hire the CBO director so we could change
- him um I mean I and how long have we had this CBO director he's been there for a while I believe uh just the brief
- research that I was able to do today after getting the you know the 11th Hour CBO score uh I believe he's been there for several
- years it seems it it seems to me like over over the last couple years we've had some really crazy arbitrary constraints put on us because of the CBO
- at the very last second and they've had these bills for a long time and then um at the very last minute they come in and say oh there's this or there's that and
- then you have to uh conform to it um I I find it interesting that the CBO whenever they score something if you try
- to deregulate something or cut spending they find a way to score that as spending more whereas when you spend more they try to say that that's going
- to save money and I've got examples of different places and different idea areas where they have been so completely out of whack by 100% 130% for example
- claiming that um Medicaid expansion their projected enrollment was 13 million it ended up being 19.5 million and that doesn't even include 16 of the
- states that they assumed would be increasing so what you have with like Obamacare they intentionally underestimated the number because they needed to keep it below a trillion
- because President Obama said he wouldn't sign anything that was over a trillion dollars so they manipulated the numbers in such a way to keep it under a trillion dollars but we all know that
- it's one of the biggest drivers of our deficit that we have right now and that's largely because the CBO so dramatically failed to adequately
- calculate the cost of what Obamacare would do and what Medicaid expansion would do that's just one example I've got many examples where CBO has
- absolutely failed to to adequately uh assess the cost I think with the the the issue of of getting rid of the Department of Education for example they
- claim it would cost millions and millions and millions of dollars to get rid of an agency that makes no sense at all you're getting rid of an agency that costs us $80 billion a year and yet it's
- supposed to cost us more money if we get rid of it that just is absurd I remember that example that was one of my amendments um to I think it was to hr2
- which was whether the the Department of Education should exist or not the CBO said it would cost more money to eliminate a department and I think that
- has something to do about their time Horizons or something but how do do we ever hold them accountable when they when they forecast one thing and then they're off by a factor of two not not
- that I can see and in fact as a civilian before I became a member of this body one of the things that always struck me was the way that they would score things
- and those of us with common sense could see that their numbers were so far out of whack that they never made any sense for example when when the challenge
- associated with Obamacare came up in 2010 and I remember it very well we were looking at the numbers and the numbers never did make sense but again they had
- to keep it under a trillion dollars so from my standpoint it's become a a very political organization that protects growing government but never adequately
- assesses the value of cutting government so we're Co we're always moving and ratcheting one way which is to make government bigger and bigger and bigger
- while they say well that's not going to cost us much money but whenever you try to cut government such as as this actually forcing the the uh the the
- agencies to follow the RFA they they come up with these enormous numbers that make no sense because they're supposed to be complying with the law right
- now so I'm looking at some tweets that the CBO director made um one of these says basically every word Ted Cruz said
- about tax policy was wrong wonder if he was misleading on other things like his campaign loans it sounds like a political hack really that's that's
- that's not very bipartisan is it I wasn't aware of that um and I believe this may have been before he was the CBO director but it gives us some insight
- into uh what his political agenda is um he's got quite a few tweets here with
- a a political journalist a few weeks before he was hired um the political journalist said in a letter Monday that was obtained by
- Politico fed chairman PO said the fed's conversations with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley before the release of the stress test results were quote procedurally identical to those that
- happen every year unquote and here we have the CBO director replying a recent parallel F fhfa allowed GSE payments to
- h e 2008 affordable housing funds despite earlier pledge to Halt money on Treasury draw director watt noted pspa draw was
- one off tax cut impact so affordable housing money continued I mean I don't think we I don't think we need a
- partisan person in CBO I think it's going to be counter to the Mandate that the the voters this is the problem right election should matter and and here
- we've had an election and we are the elected representatives each of us represent 750,000 people yet every week
- we come into this rules committee and we start considering oh what did this bureaucrat have to say about it and can we do what we were elected to do I think
- it's it's a Preposterous notion if the people actually understood how much power we've given to CBO director well I
- think that that's true but I I think there's another aspect of this that was pointed out by representative fishbach and that is transparency and honesty I I
- guess that I find it a good thing when agencies are required to give legitimate information about the cost of the decisions that they're making because we ultimately are the bosses we're
- ultimately and I don't mean we as Congress I mean we as Citizens if the EPA is going to adopt a regulation that increases the cost of G gasoline double
- then don't we have the right to say we don't want that regulation don't we as Citizens say that is a bad regulation and the EPA should not be able to impose that against us I think the very first
- things that uh my colleague to the left just stated was that the the citizens of this country are concerned about increasing gas prices increasing housing
- prices increasing food prices well where does he think all those increases are coming from the farmers aren't making the money the oil and gas companies are going broke it's the bureaucrats that
- are increasing the cost of food housing and energy and in fact every single decision almost that has come out of the Biden Administration and their administrative agencies has been
- designed to increase the cost of food housing and energy so the issue that we're addressing right here which is a transparency and accountability issue
- goes specifically to the issue of whether the citizens of this United States should be forced to pay $4 $4 half dollar in gasoline when the actual
- cost should be about two and a half gallons but because of EPA and other regulatory requirements that are put in place that's what the inflationary costs
- are so just requiring these agencies to disclose the actual cost whether it's to big business or small business requiring
- these agencies to disclose the cost of the regulation should be absolutely rule number one and I cannot imagine why anybody would be opposed to something
- like that is there anything else you'd like to add before I yield back no thank you I yield back and by the way somebody needs to
- adjust the audio it's messed up on all the mics you need to turn the gain down is there anybody in here it can do that I adjusted my hearing a oh yeah
- that'll work are you an engineer sure