The Congressional Budget Office, explained

[DonViejo]

Why this group of number-crunchers is so influential in Washington policymaking.

Updated by Andrew [e-mail] Mar 13, 2017, 9:40am EDT

Congress votes on bills, and the president signs them. And yet, to hear some tell it, it’s an entirely different institution that really calls the shots in Washington.

“I say all the time that CBO is God around here,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) mused back in 2006. “Because policy lives and dies by CBO’s word.”

Indeed, in the four decades since its creation, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has carved out an institutional role for itself as the well-respected arbiter not only of how much proposed legislation in Congress would cost, but what its economic effects would likely be.

CBO has no formal power over anything, and it never takes an explicit position for or against any bill. But despite — or perhaps because of — those facts, its estimates have been so influential among the political class that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) could say in 2008, “The history of health reform is congressmen sending health legislation off to the Congressional Budget Office to die.”

Now, it’s the fate of Republicans’ attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare that could well be determined by CBO’s pronouncements. The office is expected to soon release a report estimating how much the American Health Care Act will cost, how it might affect insurance premiums, and how many people could lose health coverage because of it.

more
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/13/14860856/congressional-budget-office-cbo-explained

[dalton99a]

1. Kick.