California Conservative

When the House bills were first scored by the CBO, each carried a price tag in excess of $1,000,000,000,000. The deficit created by the bill in the first decade was just short of $250,000,000,000. Based on those numbers, I’m skeptical of Speaker Pelosi’s claims that the new CBO scoring comes in under $900,000,000,000:

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday new estimates showed a healthcare overhaul drafted by Democrats would reduce the U.S. budget deficit over 10 years and cost less than $900 billion.

I’m skeptical. How does the Democrats’ H.R. 3200 go from price tage in excess of $1,000,000,000,000 and deficits of more than $230,000,000,000 to a price tag under $900,000,000,000 and shrinking the deficits?

First, I’m not accusing the CBO of cooking the books. Quite the opposite. I’m suggesting that House Democrats learned a trick from Sens. Baucus and Stabenow. I’m betting that they took things out of the official reform bill to get the price tag under President Obama’s magic number of $1,000,000,000,000 and make it deficit neutral with the full intent of including the things they took out in separate legislation later.

Simply put, I’m betting that the Democrats are playing games with the legislation.

I’d further submit that President Obama’s benchmarks aren’t the test of whether the legislation is worthwhile. I put a list of questions together in this post that the Democrats should be forced to answer before We The People sign off on spending money on. Here’s the list:

• Won’t increasing taxes increase health care costs?
• Won’t cutting Medicare by $404,000,000,000 while Medicare enrollment is increasing by 30 lead to rationing? Won’t those cuts likely hurt rural hospitals?
• Isn’t putting a Medicaid mandate on states avoiding taking responsibility for a federal government-initiated program?
• Why does this legislation still leave 25,000,000 uninsured?
• Isn’t the true cost to families, the federal government, insurance companies, manufacturing companies & state governments closer to $2,000,000,000,000?
• Will any of this stabilize or lower health care costs? If yes, how?
• Won’t insuring everyone cause health care spending to actually increase?
• Considering the FY2009 deficit was a record $1,420,000,000,000, can we afford another $2,000,000,000,000 in spending obligations over the next 10 years?
• Will the tax increases included in the Democrats’ health care plans stifle economic growth and job creation? If yes, doesn’t that mean we should rethink this legislation?
• Wouldn’t HSAs give people an incentive in using their health care dollars wisely? Shouldn’t that be our goal?

CBO Director Elmendorf said in testimony given before the Sen. Finance Committee that the Democrats’ legislation would actually bend the health care cost curve upward. Let’s remember that the Finance Committee bill was the cheapest bill of the 5 bills. For that reason, I’m betting that Speaker Pelosi is hiding some provisions that would change the CBO’s report.

I’d bet that it’s just a matter of time before We The People find out what those things are. This is definitely a time when We The People should question the Democrats’ leadership, especially considering the secretive nature of these negotiations and Speaker Pelosi’s manipulative nature. Putting it bluntly, I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her if I had 2 broken arms and a bad back.

Technorati Tags: CBO, Health Care, Reform, Speaker Pelosi, Deficits, Cost Curves, Tax Increases, Insurance Premiums, Mandates, Deficit Neutral, Uninsured, President Obama, Max Baucus, Debbie Stabenow, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 4:51 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Democrats, Health Care, Obama, Pelosi, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.