GOP drawing down on the Congressional Budget Office -WSJ

The GOP in there never ending war against knowledge and their program to sabotage informed debate, is taking aim (behind the scenes) at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO performs a critical tsak for Congress in providing cost estimates of proposed legislation and estimates of the resultant effects of the legislation on tax revenues and government expenses. Since virtually all GOP positions are not based on facts or legitimate analysis of problems, with an eye toward determining effective ways of dealing with issues, the CBO's impartial analysis of proposed legislation represents a problem for the Party of Con-men and Corporate Lobbyists.

However, their have been questions raised about how independent the CBO is of outside pressure concerning the matter of the termination of a CBO analyst who persisted with economic assessments which differed from those of her supervisors and certain Wall street advisors.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577197201992946704.html


~~
~~

[font size="3"]The inquiries of the Congressional Budget Office, which haven't been made public, concern the CBO's analyses of some of Washington's most complex and controversial measures, including bills on financial regulation, health care, small-business lending and efforts to aid the housing market, said people familiar with the matter.[/font]

The CBO—a nonpartisan arm of Congress—employs analysts and economists who are charged with trying to estimate the potential financial impact of proposed policies and legislation.

As part of the inquiries, some Republican committee staffers are examining whether CBO officials adequately monitored and disclosed the role of Wall Street banks, academic researchers with government ties and other outside advisers, the people said. They are pushing for greater transparency in the CBO's dealings with advisers, to shed light on the role of outside interests in shaping the office's views, the people said.

[font color="blue"]
"We have the utmost confidence in the objectivity of our work and devote considerable time and energy to explaining the basis of our findings as clearly as we can to help members of Congress understand the work that we do," the CBO's director, Douglas Elmendorf, said in a statement. [/font]
<more>