Dems Accuse GOP Of 'Enron-Type Accounting' And Assaults On CBO

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats, removed from their rhetorical shackles by the coming Republican control of the House, are accusing the GOP of resorting to "Enron-type accounting" in their efforts to push legislation in the next Congress.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the incoming ranking member of the House Budget Committee, warned on Tuesday that Republican leadership is set to implement new rules that would effectively do away with the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO is often regarded as a nonpartisan, independent scorekeeper for Congress. And by taking away its input in legislative matters, Van Hollen said, Republicans were ushering in an era of make-your-own-reality-based budgeting.

"This is a huge loophole for Enron-type accounting ... In the rule they pass tomorrow they are going to reiterate that the chair of the budget committee has the authority to come up with his own estimate of the budget impact of various pieces of legislation," Van Hollen told the Huffington Post. "And a week from now, when they get around to repealing health care reform I think you will see they will go down and say this has zero cost impact."

"It is a wholesale disregard of CBO estimates," Van Hollen added. "After all, CBO is the one referee we have around here when it comes to the budget. So again, we are watching this unfold. But it does seem that they are putting in place the pieces to allow the Chairman of the Budget committee to literally make up the numbers as they go."

The charges by the Van Hollen are fairly weighty in the wonky world of budgetary politics. But they underscore the extent to which Democrats feel that Republicans are turning the CBO and its scoring into partisan issues. Also on Tuesday, incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) accused the budget office of misrepresenting the cost of the health care law for the benefit of persuading skittish Democrats to support the bill (the CBO estimated that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion over ten years).

"Rep. Van Hollen was being hyperbolic? NAH - not Rep. Van Hollen!!!" Cantor's top spokesman, Brad Dayspring, told the Huffington Post in an email. "It seems that everybody in America knows that ObamaCare adds to the deficit and kills jobs except Rep. Van Hollen, Rep. Pelosi, and House Democrats who just suffered a historic election loss arguing otherwise."

The debate over both the CBO and the cost of health care reform should intensify in the week ahead, as House Republicans consider a bill to repeal the law. Van Hollen's office has formally requested, and expects to receive, an estimate from the budget office as to the cost of that repeal.

Comments

[ArchieBunkerTypicalRepub]

04:57 PM on 01/05/2011

All 5 of Cantors statements checked by politifact were rated as "pants on fire lies"

When is the mainstream media going to call republicans on their non-stop lies.

[mummblemouth]

05:18 PM on 01/05/2011

When stpd rightwad Americans start caring that they're being lied to.

[blueken]

04:24 PM on 01/05/2011

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't both our wars not in the budget? I've heard that before. Republicans are always more comfortable in a reality of their own makeing. How else could you campaign on de-regulation after the Gulf Oil spill and the Wall Street meltdown? You just pretend it didn't happen. That's how you can extend a "temorary" tax break and still be a deficit hawk. As it stands now, that "temporary" tax break is set to go on for 10 years while we sink further in debt. If that's not alternatave reality, I don't know what is. i read today in the local paper that the top 1% of the population of the United States now has more wealth than the bottom 90%.

[sachazg]

04:04 PM on 01/05/2011

The GOP spent 8 years ruining our economy, why would anyone trust them again. I sure don't!

[ArchieBunkerTypicalRepub]

05:00 PM on 01/05/2011

Historical facts prove that republican policies create record deficits, record debts and economic disaster.

FY 2000 - 236 Billion SURPLUS - Clinton
FY 2001 - 128 Billion SURPLUS - Clinton
FY 2002 - 158 Billion Deficit - Bush/Republican congress
FY 2003 - 378 Billion Deficit - Bush/Republican congress
FY 2004 - 413 Billion Deficit - Bush/Republican congress
FY 2005 - 318 Billion Deficit - Bush/Republican congress
FY 2006 - 248 Billion Deficit - Bush/Republican congress
FY 2007 - 161 Billion Deficit - Bush/Republican congress

Source : CBO – US Congressional Budget Office - Historical Budget Data
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/historicaltables.pdf

Bush left a record 1.3 TRILLION deficit for Obama. On Jan. 8, 2009, two weeks before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office testified before Congress that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 was projected to be $1.2 trillion.
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9958/01-08-Outlook_Testimony.pdf
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/29/barack-obama/obama-inherited-deficits-bush-administration

Reagan increased our debt an average of 23% yearly...he TRIPLED it from 934B to 2.6T (186%)
Bush increased our debt an average of 11% yearly...he DOUBLED it from 5.7 to 10.6T (86%)
Obama increased our debt 10% in his first year from 10.6 to 12.3 trillion (to stop a great depression)

Source : US Treasury Department - www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

Jan 1920-1932 - Entire republican government = Great Depression 1
Jan 2001-2007 - Entire republican government = Great Depression 2

[mummblemouth]

05:19 PM on 01/05/2011

Funnily enough, that exact record of rpblicon spending and job destruction goes back as far as the records do.

[StopMakingSense2]

03:12 PM on 01/05/2011

Independence is bad if your a republican. Independent lemmings won't go over the cliff.
Just like their work on the economic melt down commission. Deregulation can't be mentioned along other republican brain farts because although truthful would be republican blasphemy.

[devondx]

01:55 PM on 01/05/2011

No taxes produces infinite revenue ?

yeah, we can trust a criminally insane theocracy like GOP,,,,

right up there with the taliban and the manson family.

[SYR]

12:51 PM on 01/05/2011

Republicans are uncomfortable telling the truth. Everything to a Republican is a tax; everything is a jobs killer.

[kjohney]

07:43 AM on 01/05/2011

Have these guys ever lied about the numbers before? No, and I doubt they'll start now. They said that cutting taxes on the rich will increase revenues, and cut the deficit. And it has. We don't need the CBO to tell us this. It's just common sense.

[grovestand12]

10:57 AM on 01/05/2011

Have these guys ever lied about the numbers before? No, and I doubt they'll start now.

Where have you been, under a rock?

[kjohney]

04:47 AM on 01/06/2011

There needs to be a sarcasm font. My avatar isn't working anymore.

[Danigirl65]

01:23 PM on 01/05/2011

Where do you get cutting taxes on the rich increased revenues?? I'd also like to know where it cut the deficit?? The facts, man, the facts.

[kjohney]

04:48 AM on 01/06/2011

There needs to be a sarcasm font. My avatar isn't working anymore.

[iver]

07:29 AM on 01/05/2011

The latest version of the Republican game of "Hide and Seek". Try to find out how they are screwing us and budget. Catch 'em if ya can! Fun ensues.

[1donewrong]

11:36 PM on 01/04/2011

What hutsba!!! Never in our history has a president politicked the CBO into changing their scoring on a bill. The head of CBO and his family were repeatedly invited to the WH and had dinners as he was scoring the healthcare bill and eventually "changed" what he used to access costs.
Then AFTER the bill was passed he had a pang of conscience and came clean saying that the bill would cost $1 TRILLION

[RG5626]

12:17 AM on 01/05/2011

Did you hear that on World Net Daily or Glen Beck?

[yallkiddn]

06:05 AM on 01/05/2011

How 'bout Sean Hannity's or Mike Huckabee's show?

[b1rd67]

12:41 PM on 01/05/2011

What did he use to "access" the costs?

[IceStar]

10:36 PM on 01/04/2011

The CBO's numbers are only as good as the numbers Congress gives it.

Obama Care will cost American's money not save us money.

[Lemmy]

07:33 AM on 01/05/2011

So true! The health care bill is the epitome of "Enron" accounting. Accounting 101 - match revenue with expenses. ObamaCare takes 10 years of revenue with 6 years of expenses. House holds the purse strings and will knee-cap ObamaCare.

[kjohney]

07:52 AM on 01/05/2011

Suppose we should just trust you on that. You certainly have crunched the numbers to a greater degree of detail than the CBO has. No doubt, you have access to the real data, that the CBO either refuses to look at, or just simply doesn't know about.

That's what the GOP is basically saying. "Trust us, we'd never lie about anything important, like budget numbers, or the effects our policies have on the deficit". They're still saying, "cutting the taxes on the rich will increase government revenue, and decrease the deficit". Everyone knows this to be true (despite all the lies to the contrary that the CBO is peddling with their partisan "math").

[AG creative]

09:51 PM on 01/04/2011

Enron was a long time ago. Dems look like an old shag rug on this one. C'mon - can't we reference something a little more recent?

"Dems Accuse GOP of "Bear Stearns" Type Accounting"

There, perfect!

[blueken]

04:28 PM on 01/05/2011

AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America etc......

[mummblemouth]

05:22 PM on 01/05/2011

Rpblicons favor Madoff Economics.

[bmike]

09:15 PM on 01/04/2011

That crowd don't look like they are good with numbers.I was hoping they stayed with the simple things.With somebody like that involved you have to count your money everyday.

[catzoned]

09:11 PM on 01/04/2011

Cantor lies. HC saves money. I used to be a nurse for a living. Preventative care is cheaper than catastrophic care. It's cheaper to pay for a doctor office fee and pills than it is to pay for hospitalization and a nursing home for a paralyzed, brain damaged stroke patient until end of life. The mammogram and colonoscopy provision will catch diseases early. This saves lives and fortune.

Most medical costs are end of life, catastrophic care. Express your wishes to your next of kin. People get taken out with car accidents and stroke every day. Spare your own and your family the suffering and decide if you want a ventilator and tube feeding.

Just know that Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are obligated by law to do everything they can to prolong your life regardless of your condition. This includes CPR, life support and tube feeding. Planning saves lots of money and medical costs would go down. It’s economics.

My suggestion is that everybody make end-of-life decisions when issued a drivers license and they be updated every time a new one to be reissued.

It’s a conversation that people need to have with their family today. Bad things can happen quickly, like car accidents. Take pen and paper, write it down, give to your relatives.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/facing-death/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=proglist&utm_source=proglist

[p c r]

09:22 PM on 01/04/2011

I also worked as an RN for almost 30 years and realize that providing preventative healthcare to people and educating people about self care and their medications are the biggest money savers around. The Republicans oppose the healthcare plan because it is a Democratic initiative. They offer no plan of their own. They controlled Congress from 1994 until 2006 with a Republican president 8 of those years and could not come up with any healthcare proposals.
The bottom line is that the Republicans care about nothing but their money and the mooney of other wealthy people. The middle class and the poor are meaningless to them. So what if we can't afford a doctor's visit or prescribed medications.

[PenGoddess]

09:37 PM on 01/04/2011

p c r,
You are right about preventive healthcare and education are the best ways to save dollars. Unfortunately, the repubs will never go for that because people might stop eating high fructose corn syrup (AKA cirn sugar), might not need all those expensive tests that justify buying all that fancy equipment, and if they get healthy, they might not need all those magic pills that big pharma wants to sell us.  So, it's up to us. We need to take care of ourselves, eat right, exercise, get healthy and eliminate the need for healthcare as much as possible. That's what I would like to see. Kill their profit by reducing demand.

[Becky Bartlett]

09:08 PM on 01/04/2011

I'm so old I remember when you could at least trust the Republicans to run the bank.

Those days are long gone.

[devondx]

01:59 PM on 01/05/2011

Reagan never raised taxes ...!! LOL. !! ..even their heroic myths

are insane lies and total bs....

[cinesimon]

09:08 PM on 01/04/2011

Once again, Cantor shows his true, utterly dishonest colors.