“Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis”<\/p>\n
That is the gift proponents of government-run health care received this morning in the form of a New York Times<\/em> headline.\u00a0 That headline, however, along with its accompanying story<\/a> about the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost analysis<\/a> of the Baucus bill, is about as deceptive as the ObamaCare sales job Washington politicians have been employing for months.<\/p>\n CBO\u2019s preliminary cost analysis is just that \u2013 a preliminary estimate<\/em> based on a theoretical framework of ideas approved by the Senate Finance Committee.\u00a0 It\u2019s preliminary<\/em> because the actual bill hasn\u2019t been written yet, much less been combined with at least five other, more expensive versions of \u201creform\u201d circulating in the House and Senate.\u00a0 As Chris Frates of Politico.com<\/em> noted<\/a> yesterday:<\/p>\n While the media and lawmakers often shorthand a CBO letter as a \u2018score\u2019 or \u2018cost estimate,\u2019 today’s CBO letter is neither. Because the bill is still in \u2018conceptual,\u2019 or layman’s terms, CBO’s letter today was a \u2018preliminary analysis.\u2019\u00a0 For it to be an official cost estimate, the bill has to be translated into legislative language.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd CBO goes to great pains in its letter to make the distinction:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018CBO and JCT\u2019s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman\u2019s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language,\u2019 the letter says.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, is anyone prepared to believe that the most recent CBO cost estimate will even come close to resembling reality once the Baucus bill is combined with the budget-busting provisions of the various other versions of ObamaCare?\u00a0 After Reid and Pelosi are through with their parliamentary tricks outlined here<\/a> and here<\/a>?<\/p>\n Yet liberals and the mainstream media today are giddy with excitement.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because regardless of the fact that the CBO letter means nothing in the grand scheme of things, something at which the CBO itself hints, for the first time in this debate they have something \u2013 anything \u2013 that supports their dream of government-run health care.\u00a0\u00a0 Reality be damned.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our guess is that the large majority of Americans are still not ready to join their party.\u00a0 Even taken at face value, CBO\u2019s preliminary claim that the Baucus bill will actually reduce the budget deficit by $81 billion over 10 years simply means that the legislation raises taxes on businesses and individuals and cuts benefits only slightly more than it increases spending, while still leaving 25 million people uninsured.\u00a0 And the more expensive the final bill gets \u2013 don\u2019t believe for a moment that it won\u2019t get more expensive \u2013 the greater the tax increases and benefit cuts\u00a0will become in order to square with the President\u2019s pledge to not sign a bill that adds “one dime” to the deficit.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t “change” grand?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis” That is the gift proponents of government-run health care received this morning in the form of a New York Times headline.\u00a0 That headline, however, along with its accompanying story about the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost analysis of the Baucus bill, is about as deceptive as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[99,40,12,24],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-baucus","tag-congressional-budget-office","tag-health-care","tag-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1200,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}