Anyone Want To Make Bets On How Long The CBO Will Continue To Exhist Under GOP Control?
Republicans tried to ram the Republican 'Wealthcare' bill (disguised as a 'healthcare' bill) through committee before the CBO could score it. They failed. The CBO just said this bill will cost 24 million people their health insurance. Any bets on how long the CBO will last after this? I think it'll be their next target.
Republicans have hated reality-based governance, and evidence-based policy for the last 30 years. As a scientist, I know the value of scientific evidence, as opposed to believing in 'magic.' You do experiments, you make observations, you see what works and what doesn't, and then you make public policy based on what has been SHOWN to work.
This is also how Democrats have believed government should work. Republicans USED to believe it, too. That's how the data-gathering government institutions we now have came into being. Because BOTH parties believed you could make better policy if you had evidence to work from. If you could make predictions about what will happen, based on what you've already seen happen.
Well, Republicans have started believing less and less in science, and more and more in 'magic ideology' over the last 30 years. Ever since Reagan introduced 'voodoo economics' they've tried to get the CBO to switch to 'dynamic scoring.' They successfully FORBID HHS from collecting any statistics on how many people are killed by guns every year, because they don't want government to be able to make gun policy based on that information. They've made attempts to stop the EPA and NASA from gathering data on Climate Change because, again, they don't want government to make fossil fuel policy based on THAT information.
While they succeeded in preventing HHS from collecting gun-death data, the other efforts have failed over the last eight years because the Democrat in the White House prevented them. Now that there's a Republican in the White House I have no doubt that HHS, OMB, NASA and the EPA will all be gutted and muted; and rendered useless as places that government can look for data.
But the CBO was the last bastion of impartial data related to government policy. Ryan tried to get the Republican 'Wealthcare Bill' through all of its committees before the CBO could score it, and failed. The CBO has now come out with the prediction that the Republican 'Healthcare' bill will cost 24 million people their health insurance, and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth to the top 1% who will no longer have to subsidize healthcare for the poor.
So...? How long do you think it will be before the GOP-controlled Congress moves to gut, mute, and otherwise dismantle the CBO as a means of predicting how much various government policies will cost? My money says they'll move to dismantle it before they try to re-write the Tax Code.