Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox Business Tuesday to urge Republicans to dismantle the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and accused the agency of repeatedly undermining conservative fiscal policy with flawed and biased projections.
The CBO estimated Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s tax policies would increase the national debt by approximately $3.8 trillion. During an appearance on “Kudlow,” Gingrich said his leadership team balanced the federal budget four times in the 1990s, something he said would’ve been impossible had they followed the CBO’s guidance.
“When I was Speaker, we balanced the budget for the only four times in the last hundred years. If we had listened to the Congressional Budget Office, we would never have gotten it done. They are profoundly wrong,” Gingrich told Larry Kudlow.
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Gingrich said the CBO’s reputation for nonpartisanship is a media-driven illusion.
“It’s essentially a fake budget office picked up by the fake news media, which then gives it a sort of overview of somehow being nonpartisan. It’s nonsense,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich called on House Republicans to take immediate steps to demand transparency.
“Republicans should routinely hold hearings, force the Congressional Budget Office to open up their black boxes. Tell us how they get to these numbers. What is their reasoning? They were off by well over a trillion dollars on how much Biden’s big spending bill would cost,” Gingrich added.
Gingrich blamed these wild miscalculations on a bloated and unaccountable bureaucracy.
“They were off by well over a trillion dollars in the other direction by how much Trump’s tax cuts in 2017 would generate. So here you have a huge swing of trillions of dollars from a 250-person bureaucracy hidden away with no accountability, no transparency. And the Republicans, frankly, should replace it,” Gingrich said.
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The CBO has faced scrutiny for significant forecasting inaccuracies. In 2001, it projected a $5.6 trillion surplus for 2002–2011, but the government ended up with a $6.1 trillion deficit, a swing of $11.7 trillion caused by tax cuts, increased spending, and economic downturns. Similarly, the CBO overestimated Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollment, predicting 24.6 million enrollees by 2020, while actual enrollment was only 10.7 million.
House Republicans advanced Trump’s tax and spending package Sunday night after four conservative holdouts allowed it to proceed, citing fiscal improvements. The bill passed the Budget Committee by a narrow 17–16 vote and now heads to the Senate.
The House budget reconciliation package combines proposals from 11 committees tasked with cutting $1.5 trillion over a decade, with most exceeding their savings goals, according to GOP leadership. While Budget Chair Jodey Arrington touted it as the most cost-saving bill since 1974, fiscal hawks warned the reforms are too delayed and insufficient, especially after the U.S. lost its final triple-A credit rating.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
