Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich slammed the Congressional Budget Office over its score on the American Health Care Act Monday, calling it “disgustingly wrong.”
"They should abolish the Congressional Budget Office. It is corrupt. It is dishonest. It was totally wrong on Obamacare by huge, huge margins," Gingrich told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum on "The First 100 Days."
"I don't trust a single word they have published and I don't believe them."
MacCallum responded by noting that congressional Republicans appointed Keith Hall, the office’s director.
"People maybe misjudge what they're supposed to do," she said. "Their job is figure out whether or not this is something that can get through on reconciliation, right? Not to make a judgment about the whole bill."
Gingrich pushed back, recalling his time as speaker in the ‘90s.
"No. Let me be very clear. I helped balance the budget four straight times, the only time in your lifetime," he said. "We fought the Congressional Budget Office every time."
"When Obamecare came out, they used the architect of Obamacare as their adviser on how to score Obamacare. And their score, you go back and look at it, it is totally dishonest, disgustingly wrong, and that whole thing should be abolished."
The CBO predicted Monday that under the GOP plan, 14 million would lose their health insurance in 2018, with that number rising to 24 million by 2026.
Gingrich said the CBO could be replaced by "putting out to bid and having three to five professional firms score these things."
"Nobody has an exact score, it's not possible," he said, adding, "there are whole sections of this bill they haven't scored."
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