Newt Gingrich wants to kill the Congressional Budget Office. Why? Because their data don’t support his ideology.
You simply can’t make this stuff up. Remember, this is the “thinking man’s” GOP candidate. Professor Newt Gingrich, Esquire. Roll Call:
Former Speaker and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich might well have said that he wants to kill his personal physician because he didn’t like being told his blood pressure was too high.
But that’s the equivalent of what Gingrich did say during a recent debate, when he made it clear that the Congressional Budget Office has to be eliminated if health care reform is going to be repealed.
According to Gingrich, the CBO should be done away with because its analysis shows that, as enacted, health care reform reduces the federal budget deficit. This means that repealing it — as many in the GOP base to which Gingrich is appealing wants to do — will increase the deficit and, therefore, require spending cuts or revenue increases to offset the impact. That, of course, will make the repeal effort much harder and far less likely.
But instead of proposing those offsets — that is, instead of doing the budget equivalent of taking steps to lower his blood pressure by losing weight, using less salt or taking medication — Gingrich wants to kill the CBO budget doctor so he doesn’t have to hear any more bad reports.
Got that? Because the Affordable Care Act is actually working, in order to repeal it, he has to create an “unperson” or in this case an “unagency” out of the CBO and erase them from the record books. This is a candidate for the most important job in the world. And if the data don’t fit the ideology? Erase the data.
I’m dumbfounded.
Next Newt will try repealing the law of gravity because he is full of hot air and not floating high enough.