Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday rejected the CBO's cost estimate of healthcare repeal as "garbage in, garbage out."
McCain said the Congressional Budget Office estimate that repealing the healthcare law would increase the deficit by $230 billion relies on flawed assumptions.
"So what I'm saying is, garbage in, garbage out," McCain said on the Senate floor.
The CBO is the CBO. They're the refs. They're the closest thing to objectivity when it comes to evaluating the budget and how legislation will function. The Republicans have been trying to suggest that the CBO is deliberately misinterpreting these numbers -- because the numbers contradict every bit of nonsense the Republicans have to say about the ACA and repealing it. Well, okay. Fine. Then the Republicans can't use CBO data to back up any future laws. They can't have it both ways. Either the CBO is accurate and objective(ish) or they're wildly inaccurate.