Olde Hornet
Well-Known Member
Congressional Budget Office showdown: GOP tries to shoot the messenger, misses
https://www.yahoo.com/news/congress...p-tries-shoot-messenger-misses-233756967.html
When Congress created the Congressional Budget Office in 1974 to rein in President Nixon’s abuse of power, Steve Bell was a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill involved in the process. Bell predicted his party would try to gut the very office they set up to keep power-hungry presidents in check.
“That’s one of those times when I wished I was wrong,” Bell, now a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said this week in an interview.
The Republican-controlled House overwhelmingly on Wednesday rejected a proposal to neuter the CBO by removing its budget analysis division, by a vote of 309-to-116. But attempts to undermine the CBO are another example of how partisan passions in the current political environment are overwhelming consideration for long-standing norms that undergird the separation of powers.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, spearheaded the effort to remove the CBO’s ability to provide its own independent analysis.
But as Bell explained, the CBO was created to reinforce the independence of the legislative branch from the executive branch. As Sen. John McCain said this week in a dramatic floor speech: “We are not the president’s subordinates. We are his equal.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/congress...p-tries-shoot-messenger-misses-233756967.html
When Congress created the Congressional Budget Office in 1974 to rein in President Nixon’s abuse of power, Steve Bell was a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill involved in the process. Bell predicted his party would try to gut the very office they set up to keep power-hungry presidents in check.
“That’s one of those times when I wished I was wrong,” Bell, now a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said this week in an interview.
The Republican-controlled House overwhelmingly on Wednesday rejected a proposal to neuter the CBO by removing its budget analysis division, by a vote of 309-to-116. But attempts to undermine the CBO are another example of how partisan passions in the current political environment are overwhelming consideration for long-standing norms that undergird the separation of powers.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, spearheaded the effort to remove the CBO’s ability to provide its own independent analysis.
But as Bell explained, the CBO was created to reinforce the independence of the legislative branch from the executive branch. As Sen. John McCain said this week in a dramatic floor speech: “We are not the president’s subordinates. We are his equal.”
