“Apparently according to the law the CBO has broken the law everytime it has done an analysis that compared any new law to the ACA…”
Can you point to a specific instance?
…since the Employer Mandate was in the original law and not postponed by Congress, but by The Obama Administration from my understanding so that should be included in the analysis which it never has been. Obama postponed it not Congress? Correct.
The original ACA bill that passed Congress and was signed into law stated that the employer mandate would go into effect in 2 stages, the first stage was for 2014 and the second was for “after 2014” (In other words, starting with calendar year 2015). The law also stated:
“The Secretary shall prescribe rules, regulations, or guidance for the repayment of any assessable payment (including interest) if such payment is based on the allowance or payment of an applicable premium tax credit or cost-sharing reduction with respect to an employee, such allowance or payment is subsequently disallowed, and the assessable payment would not have been required to be made but for such allowance or payment.’’.
“The Secretary” they are talking about there is the Sec. of the Treasury. So the Treasury was supposed to write rules (which are law) to implement and enforce the employer mandate provision. the IRS (which operates under the Sec of the Treasury) wrote those rules and implemented them for calendar year 2014. The employer mandate DOES exist exactly as Congress directed.
But the law also allows for waivers and that’s exactly what the Obama administration did. The employer mandate went into effect and the IRS published a laundry list of ways employers could request waivers to it.
So, despite the fact that many employers have never paid any penalty, all of it has been within the bounds of the ACA law itself. While the Obama administration did waiver most of the employer mandate requirements for several years, Congress gave them the authority to do so.
Also from my understanding there have been several occasions where the CBO has been given economic assumptions they were to use based on what was in the laws…many of which were not in the realm of reality, yet they used them.
Absolutely. That happens every single day. If I’m sitting in Congress and want to make a bill I’m sponsoring look better than it is, I submit it to the CBO for analysis and tell them to use default assumptions that GDP will grow at a 5% rate annual, that unemployment will stay at a steady 4% rate and that there will be no inflation. The CBO is then required to use those assumptions whether they are realistic or not. Of course, my political opponents could do the same thing with their own stated assumptions. We’d both get back reports with wildly different assessments of the impact of the bill. If neither of us specifies any limitations, then the CBO is free to use their own assumptions.
So what you have stated is basically Congress tied their hands on real financial analysis.
That has always been the case. One has to understand the entire purpose of the CBO. Prior to 1974 it didn’t exist. Up until that point, legislation was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for analysis.
But OMB falls under the Executive branch. Congress felt that OMB was “spinning” their analysis to suit the President’s agenda and they wanted an unbiased review. So they created the CBO that is responsible to the Legislative branch and left themselves the ability to “spin” analysis in their own favor as a counter to the OMB. The idea was CBO vs. OMB = Congress vs. President.
But while the CBO is officially non-partisan, partisan factions within the Congress can and have used the CBO to their own partisan ends.
