Republicans barked Tuesday at the Congressional Budget Office on how it came to critical estimates on the impact of GOP’s Obamacare repeal bills.
Lawmakers took aim at CBO Director Keith Hall Tuesday during a hearing of the House Budget Committee. Hall defended the agency’s handling of estimates on Obamacare repeal.
Republicans have been bitter over CBO estimates that showed tens of millions of people would go without coverage if House and Senate bills that repealed Obamacare were enacted.
Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., took aim at an estimate of the House repeal bill that showed 23 million people would go without insurance over the next decade. The figure was due to repeal of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, mandates for getting insurance and cuts to insurance subsidies.
“What you could have said is that we are going to increase healthcare freedom for people relative to current law,” Woodall said. “Every sentence has a political flavor to it.”
Hall bristled at the accusation, saying that the CBO’s language was not political.
“We tried to be very factual about this,” he said.
Hall said the CBO doesn’t make policy recommendations and it hires people based on their expertise. It works to prevent employees from having conflicts of interest.
He said the agency looks at whether an employee recently had a political post and also monitor social media of potential applicants to examine possible political affiliation.
“I think CBO has processes in place to make sure that we are objective,” he said.
Republicans took aim at the CBO during the debate over Obamacare repeal last year. The House passed an Obamacare bill in May while the Senate failed to pass one in late July.
Back in May, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney pointed to a CBO employee who used to work in the Clinton administration, suggesting she may be biased. Mulvaney later apologized for singling out the employee.
GOP lawmakers were especially upset over the CBO’s estimates for coverage losses due to the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate. The CBO had estimated 13 million people would go without insurance due to the mandate going away, compared to an independent estimate from ratings firm Standard & Poor’s that found only three to five million would not get coverage.
The CBO is looking at its methodology for coverage estimates for the individual mandate, and a new methodology is expected later this year.
Democrats and opponents of repeal repeatedly used the CBO’s estimates, especially on coverage losses, to bash the repeal bills. Polling showed the public gave low marks to both House and Senate repeal bills.
Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., said her problems with the agency don’t center on budgetary estimates on costs.
“When you get into behavioral assumptions is where I have the question,” Black said.
Hall said morale at the agency is good despite the attacks.
“We do have some trouble when people call us biased,” he said. “We try very hard to do our work carefully.”
Democrats defended the agency at the hearing. Ranking member Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., said that CBO “does not exist to give us the information we want to hear.”
