The Congressional Budget Office has been an obstacle to Republicans bent on stripping access to healthcare from tens of millions of Americans. Every time Zombie Trumpcare rises from the grave and totters toward the finish line, the CBO score provides one of the stakes that brings the monster down, albeit temporarily. It would be so much easier to shovel money from working people to plutocrats if Republicans could substitute figures pulled out of a Koch Brother’s ass for CBO estimates. Via The Hill:
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, plans on offering an amendment to spending legislation this week that would cut the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s staff by 89 people.
The proposed cuts come after a series of CBO reports predicted that tens of millions of people would become uninsured under various Republican plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said Monday that, instead of relying on the CBO’s expertise to assess how much congressional bills would cost, the office should aggregate estimates produced by various think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation.
The Republican president and his minions tell bald-faced lies at such an unprecedented clip that statements that would have triggered months-long scandals in a normal presidency pass with barely a ripple. The GOP has its own propaganda network in Fox News (and lesser imps and demons) to lie to the American people about the dangers we face and make rational discussion of political or cultural issues with its brainwashed viewers impossible. And now Republicans want to drown the federal agency that provides budget and economic information to lawmakers. Makes sense.