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Gohmert calls for replacing CBO with competitive scoring system
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) on Tuesday called for the elimination of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as the sole scorer of congressional legislation and the creation of a new, competitive system that would open the job of scoring to several entities at once.
Under Gohmert's proposal, various entities could attempt to score bills, and over time could be rewarded with federal money for making accurate predictions. He said this competitive system is needed because of the constant inaccuracy of CBO, and even worse, revised scores years later than are often much higher than the initial estimates.
"We need to make a competition of it," Gohmert said on the House floor. "It's what Americans do well, when we compete as a nation. When we have people in America competing, we do better. So let's have competition for scoring bills."
"And they re-score it and come back with $800 billion, with a wink and a nod apparently," Gohmert said. "And then after it passes, they come back and say, oh you know what, it was actually more than $1 trillion, and now we're told, maybe $1.6 trillion. Who knows, maybe $1.8?
"Any entity whose margin of error for scoring bills in Congress is plus or minus 100 percent margin of error does not need to be allowed to do any more scoring."
Gohmert said he was discussing his idea with economist Art Laffer, and that Moody's, S&P and other entities have said they don't score bills. To that, Laffer said, "They will if you pay them," Gohmert related.
He said he envisions allowing universities to take on the task of scoring legislation, which could lead to financial rewards for accurate scores.
"And then over a few years of time, we would begin to see who's more accurate and who's not," he said. "We would be able to score the scorers."
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