U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows is calling for the elimination of the department within the Congressional Budget Office that scores bills.
Meadows, a Republican who represents western North Carolina, is also the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
He has been critical of the CBO’s Budget Analysis Division and its recent scoring of Republican bills that would repeal and replace Obamacare.
“They’re the one group that makes a weatherman’s ten-day forecast look accurate,” Meadows said in an address to the National Press Club on Monday.
Recent Republican-backed health care bills scored by the CBO have shown that more than 20 million Americans would lose health insurance.
The CBO is a non-partisan department and is currently led by a Republican-selected director.
Meadows proposed that the CBO’s Budget Analysis Division be replaced by an aggregate score from four private think tanks: the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Urban Institute.
“We think that’s a pragmatic way to use the private sector and let Congress rely on a score that’s accurate,” said Meadows.
The proposal to cut the CBO department is part of a larger spending bill that would eliminate 89 jobs and $15 million of the CBO’s $48.5 million budget.
