Afternoon Must-Read: Abbe Gluck: The CBO Score and the Made-Up Narrative of the Obamacare Subsidies Case

Abbe Gluck: The CBO Score and the Made-Up Narrative of the Obamacare Subsidies Case: “The CBO scoring of Obamacare was central…

…in the public eye, and intensely scrutinized by all involved…. CBO never assumed in scoring the bill that subsidies would be unavailable on federal exchanges…. The text of the ACA, when read not in isolation, but in context…clearly permits the Government’s interpretation of the subsidies…. But the CBO story offers another datum–along with the testimonials of staffers and reporters that have been pouring out all week–that no one ever assumed the statute said otherwise….

Remember this is a Chevron case–a case that turns on the doctrine of agency deference. To win under the doctrine, all the Government has to do is show that its reading of the statute is plausible. The challengers… have to convince the Court their reading of the statutory text is not only plausible but is the only possible reading…. A major lawsuit… should not be based on a story that is made up…