The Coming War on the CBO
By 
One of the most important reasons the effort to repeal the ACA appears to have failed is that the Congressional Budget Office — despite being supervised by a Republican — provided accurate information about the effects of AHCA and BCRA. And this in turn compelled the media to do what it do disastrously failed to do during the campaign — provide accurate policy coverage of Republican health care proposals. The media will take claims made by Democratic politicians about the effects of Republican policy — even if unassailably true — as “views differ,” but the CBO carries real authority, and this matters.
The Republican response will be predictable:
The Trump administration is not fond of the Congressional Budget Office.
The independent, highly respected agency that analyzes the impact of legislative proposals has said the numbers in President Trump’s budget don’t add up and that Republican health care proposals would cause huge insurance coverage losses. And it will hold immense sway over the fate of Republicans’ next legislative priority: tax reform.
The White House has embarked on a rhetorical war against the agency without precedent. The White House’s official Twitter account sent out a “fact-check” video trying to debunk the CBO’s findings that Republican health bills would reduce health coverage by more than 20 million people. (At one point, the video misspells the word “inaccurate.”)
In an interview in May, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney attacked the group, saying, “At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?”
It’s normal for politicians to be frustrated with the CBO. It’s a highly respected nonpartisan research group whose estimates of budgetary cost and other effects of legislation are treated as very credible in Washington. That can cause problems for members of Congress and the administration when the numbers don’t come out how they like, and has earned the CBO criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike in the past, some deserved and some not deserved.
What’s not normal is trying to erase the CBO’s formal role in policymaking. The agency normally gets to decide which bills reduce the deficit, meaning they can pass the Senate with a bare majority and avoid a filibuster. That could change this year or next. Senate Republicans got a competing analysis of their health care bill from the Department of Health and Human Services. They’ve also suggested they might do the same with tax reform.
If that happens, the CBO will be weakened like never before, and face a fight for its own relevance and survival.
A political party committed in any way to the public interest would look at the massively unpopular policy it just put forward and look into reorienting its priorities and objectives. A party that isn’t will prefer to shoot the messengers.