Replies

any action that the CBO deems increases the deficit would have to go before this debt commission to be balanced with spending cuts or other tax increases.

The CBO also scored Obamacare, including all the assumptions that everyone knows are very unlikely to come about: such as 4% GDP growth and continued low interest rates on government bonds, and that scheme of using a ten year forecast with six years of new expense and ten years of new revenue from Obamacare.

Apparently, all the CBO does is run the numbers based on the assumptions provided by the party in power. So what the CBO turns out is dependent on what assumptions it is provided by the party in power.

So the budget impact of ending or continuing the Bush tax cuts would depend on the assumptions made about their effect on budget revenues.

I'd thought in the past that the CBO exercised some quality control on the sort of assumptions used in their scoring of bills, but that sure didn't seem to be the case as they scored Obamacare.