Politics

CBO hires Obamacare advocate to provide ‘objective’ health care budget numbers

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

The Daily Caller has learned the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has hired Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, an Obama administration official who has been key in implementing parts of Obamacare thus far and a large donor to Democrats and liberal groups, to work in its Health and Human Resources (HHR) Office. As CBO’s deputy assistant director of HHR, Buntin is expected to assist with the Office’s prime directive, providing “objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget.”

It may be difficult for Buntin to provide such “objective” and “nonpartisan” statistics to members of Congress, though, given her partisan support of Obamacare and Democratic candidates. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, she donated $2,300 to President Obama in 2008, $4,000 to John Kerry’s White House bid in 2004, $9,500 to Democratic Party group DNC Services Group since 2004 and $3,300 to pro-abortion group EMILY’s list since 2004. Buntin was also a major donor to Georgetown University professor and Democrat Judy Feder’s 2006 and 2008 House race challenges of Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolfe. Buntin gave Feder $7,050 between 2006 and 2008.

Buntin also donated $500 to South Carolina’s 2004 Democratic Senate candidate Inez Tenenbaum, who lost that election to Republican Jim DeMint.

Buntin, currently an Obama administration Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official, has helped with the implementation of Obamacare’s information technology and record-keeping procedures, too. As the Director of the Office of Economic Analysis and Modeling underneath the National Coordinator for Health IT, Buntin has provided the administration with statistics and economic analyses to help it achieve its goal of collecting EHRs, or “Electronic Health Records” of Americans. Buntin’s work with HHS included using “economic analysis and models to describe and understand the factors driving” the “adoption, meaningful use, and interoperability of EHRs,” and an “information exchange.”

(AP: Health care law waivers stir suspicion of favors)

Not only has Buntin helped implement Obamacare, she advocated on behalf of it before Obama was even elected president. On Oct. 29, 2008, Buntin, described as an “Obama spokeswoman,” delivered a speech to health industry insiders so they could “learn more about the Obama/Biden health care plan.”

On top of that, Buntin’s parents, Nancy Beeuwkes and Reiner Beeuwkes III of Concord, Mass., were on the Boston Globe’s recent list of the Bay State’s biggest Democratic donors in recent years. The May 18 Globe piece shows Nancy has given $310,400 and that Reiner has given $279,500 to Democrats since 2007.

Somehow, though, Buntin has to put all her advocacy, large donations to left-wing groups and Democratic candidates and Obama agenda-supporting aside in her new role at CBO. It remains unclear if she’ll be able to do so.

According to the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the CBO is supposed to hire candidates for analyst positions based on their expertise and experience. “The Director shall appoint and fix the compensation of such personnel as may be necessary to carry out the duties and functions of the Office,” the law states. “All personnel of the Office shall be appointed without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of their fitness to perform their duties. The Director may prescribe the duties and responsibilities of the personnel of the Office, and delegate to them authority to perform any of the duties, powers, and functions imposed on the Office or on the Director. For purposes of pay (other than pay of the Director and Deputy Director) and employment benefits, rights, and privileges, all personnel of the Office shall be treated as if they were employees of the House of Representatives.”

Both Buntin and the CBO refused TheDC’s requests for comment.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel