All eight former directors of the Congressional Budget Office wrote a letter to Congressional leaders defending their projections against criticisms from Republicans and the Trump administration.
"We write to express our strong objection to recent attacks on the integrity and professionalism of the agency and on the agency's role in the legislative process," the directors wrote in a letter published on Medium.
The letter comes a week after two White House staffers penned an op-ed in The Washington Post calling the CBO's scoring methodology "fundamentally flawed" because it overestimates the effects of the individual mandate in healthcare reform. This is not the first public denouncement of the CBO by the White House. The Trump administration has been highly critical of the independent agency throughout the healthcare debate this year.
Here the White House tweeted a criticism of the CBO, with a link to the White House blog about the agency's inaccuracies in analyzing the Better Care Reconciliation Act.
The CBO has consistently failed to accurately predict how legislation will impact health insurance coverage: https://t.co/qC6yImjanL pic.twitter.com/YQh01jud8i
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 12, 2017
In the blog, the White House wrote the CBO estimate from 2012 of ACA enrollment numbers was off by about 15 million in 2017. "Even today, the CBO is using a starting point from 2016 to predict the impact of repealing and replacing Obamacare that has already been proven, well, wrong," the blog reads.
Here the White House tweeted a fact-checking video of the CBO's health coverage estimates.
The Congressional Budget Office's math doesn't add up.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 12, 2017
Faulty Numbers = Faulty Results pic.twitter.com/zdf4bZ01ma
The former CBO directors defended their process, noting the agency does not provide policy recommendations, uses research from both sides of the aisle and is transparent about its process and record.
"Policy changes are often complex, the economy is dynamic and defies precise prediction, and many policies are modified over time," the former directors wrote. "However, such analysis does generate estimates that are more accurate, on average, than estimates or guesses by people who are not objective and not as well informed as CBO's analysts."
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