AP Explains: Budget scorekeeper in health care spotlight
The obscure but respected agency, established under the 1974 budget act, provides cost estimates of legislation, baseline projections of the federal budget and its components, and independent economic and deficit statistics for lawmakers.
Trump administration officials and some congressional Republicans preemptively criticized CBO ahead of its assessment of the cost and coverage in the Republican replacement to the Affordable Care Act.
The agency's estimates, for instance, significantly overstated the number of people who would buy insurance on state and federal exchanges under the law, in part because it thought the individual mandate and accompanying tax penalties would be more effective in forcing people to buy insurance.
"Predicting the effects of large policy changes is always difficult, but CBO's predictions for the (Affordable Care Act) in 2010 were much more accurate than the predictions of many Republican opponents of the law," said former agency chief Doug Elmendorf, who was appointed by Democrats.
CBO Director Keith Hall, a conservative economist, was selected two years ago by Republican Tom Price, then the chairman of the House Budget Committee and now the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.