Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, we have heard some of the problems with CBO from Mr. Meadows. We heard from Mr. Perry immediately before on his amendment. The CBO is meant to help Congress evaluate legislation. But I do not believe the agency, as currently constituted, has or can do so effectively. {time} 1745 Too often, predictions made by CBO turn out to be far off the mark. We heard about the 2002 farm bill and the 2008 farm bill from Mr. Meadows. That is true, but people back home may not realize that, in fact, we don't do a farm bill every year. We do one roughly every 5 years, sometimes a little later than that, so there have not been so many to score. One of our favorites on the Energy and Commerce Committee, on which I am pleased to serve, is the fact that, in 2015, we decided we would push forward and sell, as a nation, some broadband spectrum. CBO said zero dollars would be yielded from that sale. Now, I use this all the time when I am talking to high school students, because you don't have to be a CBO person living in the ivory tower that they must live in to understand that broadband spectrum has value in today's society, and zero is not the right score. In the end, it brought in $44 billion. When you take away the costs, it brought in a net $40 billion. CBO was wrong. CBO has overestimated on a number of things. Mr. Perry talked about ObamaCare. But time after time after time, they have gotten things wrong.…”