The Hill News

The Congressional Budget Office should be replaced because it is "garbage in, garbage out" Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) said Friday.

Price was responding to a recent preliminary analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which said that repealing the healthcare reform law passed last year would substantially raise the deficit.  Price is one of a few prominent GOPers who have recently challenged the accuracy of the CBO in light of the report.

Next week the Republican controlled House is set to vote on repeal of the healthcare law. Democrats have used the CBO's analysis to support the argument that repealing the act would add to the deficit and hurt the economy.

"It's one of the things that actually we need to have a discussion about and come to an agreement about how you're going to score these things," Price said. "That's why we've got to get a new system, a new way to be able to determine how much programs are actually going to co! st so that you can actually compare real numbers, apples to apples. Right now it doesn't work."

Price, who is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, isn't the only Republican to recently denounce the CBO. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, both potential presidential candidates in 2012,  also criticized the CBO's accuracy. On Friday Huckabee said he did not trust the CBO analysis either.

"I don't buy that number at all, because it's a lot of, really I think, accounting schemes to be able to say: in the best scenario this is how [much] it's going to save," Huckabee said.

In even stronger language Thursday night on Fox while debating Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-NY) Bachmann said that the CBO numbers just regurgitates numbers by the Democrats.

"Well, let's remember how CBO works," Bachmann said. "These are numbers that the Democrats gave to the CBO. So, if it is garbage in, it is garbage ou! t. And we all know that's exactly what those numbers were with! CBO."