CBO: Obamacare Will Cost 800,000 Jobs

This is the smoking gun that needs to be replayed and replayed between now and 2012.

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On The Road To Economic Armageddon - New Record Deficit Spending

According to new CBO estimates, Obama has us on a path, in 2011, to spend $1.5 trillion of borrowed money. This from the Washinton Post:

This year's deficit would be the highest on record and would equal about 9.8 percent of the economy, the CBO said, slightly smaller than the 2009 budget gap, which at $1.4 trillion amounted to nearly 10 percent of the gross domestic product. However, at a time when policymakers had hoped to begin closing the gap between spending and revenue, the CBO forecast that it is widening again and is on track to remain well above $1 trillion in 2012, the fourth year in a row.

Obama will destroy us if he and his far left cohorts are not voted out in 2012.

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Stopping The Tsunami Of Obamacare

On his first day as Speaker of the House, John Boehner received a letter from the CBO stating that "repealing health care reform will add $230 billion to the deficit over the next decade, leave 32 million fewer people with insurance and lead to higher costs for those who are covered." That was both a smart tactical ploy by the left and an utterly contemptible falsehood.

Responding to the left's disingenuous arguments, Charles Krauthammer weighs in today, explaining in a few short paragraphs the massive fraud of Obamacare:

Suppose someone - say, the president of United States - proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I've got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.

He'd be laughed out of town. And yet, this is precisely what the Democrats are claiming as a virtue of Obamacare. During the debate over Republican attempts to repeal it, one of the Democrats' major talking points has been that Obamacare reduces the deficit - and therefore repeal raises it - by $230 billion. Why, the Congressional Budget Office says exactly that.

Very true. And very convincing. Until you realize where that number comes from. Explains CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf in his "preliminary analysis of H.R. 2" (the Republican health-care repeal): "CBO anticipates that enacting H.R. 2 would probably yield, for the 2012-2021 period, a reduction in revenues in the neighborhood of $770 billion and a reduction in outlays in the vicinity of $540 billion."

As National Affairs editor Yuval Levin pointed out when mining this remarkable nugget, this is a hell of a way to do deficit reduction: a radical increase in spending, topped by an even more radical increase in taxes.

Of course, the very numbers that yield this $230 billion "deficit reduction" are phony to begin with. The CBO is required to accept every assumption, promise (of future spending cuts, for example) and chronological gimmick that Congress gives it. All the CBO then does is perform the calculation and spit out the result.

In fact, the whole Obamacare bill was gamed to produce a favorable CBO number. Most glaringly, the entitlement it creates - government-subsidized health insurance for 32 million Americans - doesn't kick in until 2014. That was deliberately designed so any projection for this decade would cover only six years of expenditures - while that same 10-year projection would capture 10 years of revenue. With 10 years of money inflow vs. six years of outflow, the result is a positive - i.e., deficit-reducing - number. Surprise.

If you think that's audacious, consider this: Obamacare does not create just one new entitlement (health insurance for everyone); it actually creates a second - long-term care insurance. With an aging population, and with long-term care becoming extraordinarily expensive, this promises to be the biggest budget buster in the history of the welfare state.

And yet, in the CBO calculation, this new entitlement to long-term care reduces the deficit over the next 10 years. By $70 billion, no less. How is this possible? By collecting premiums now, and paying out no benefits for the first 10 years. Presto: a (temporary) surplus. As former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and scholars Joseph Antos and James Capretta note, "Only in Washington could the creation of a reckless entitlement program be used as 'offset' to grease the way for another entitlement." I would note additionally that only in Washington could such a neat little swindle be titled the "CLASS Act" (for the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act).

That a health-care reform law of such enormous size and consequence, revolutionizing one-sixth of the U.S. economy, could be sold on such flimflammery is astonishing, even by Washington standards. . . .

(H/T Prarie Pundit)

And here was Paul Ryan making the same points on the House floor the other day, prior to the vote to repeal Obamacare:



(H/T Nice Deb)

At the WSJ several days ago, a former CBO Director and two former CBO Assistant Directors explained in some detail how and why the CBO came op with the numbers it did. The short version, false numbers in, false numbers out.

The left is now in an all-out push to protect Obamacare, willing to use the most ridiculous and scurrilous of lies to shape public opinion.

Rep. Steve Cohen equates Republicans with Nazis for their "lies" in support of repealing Obamacare. He gives no specifics, but then again, no specifics are required for left wing argument, just demonization.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee tells us that repealing Obamacare will "kill" people, and in particular, directs her arguments towards seniors, all of whom are actually covered by Medicare, the program raped to provide funding for Obamacare.

(/sarcasm on) Noted Constitutional scholars (/sarcasm off) Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Rep. John Lewis, between only a few working brain cells, tell us that to repeal Obamacare would be unconstitutional.

The left, in passing the nightmare for our country that is Obamacare, made the wildly ridiculous argument that Obamacare would create jobs. Well, the massive regulations will create more government jobs, but the regulations themselves would inevitably cost exponentially far more jobs in the private sector as the costs of compliance take hold. Apparently some on the left don't quite understand economics or much about the private sector, so when Eugene Robinson, appearing on MSNBC, called on Obama to now defend Obamacare by explaining to America how it would be a boon to employment, Rachel Maddow quickly switched him off that line of argument.

At any rate, expect to be inundated with emotion-heavy, fact-lite arguments from the left on Obamacare for the next two years. The single most important thing that Republicans can do is call the CBO Director in for hearings, have him explain both how the books are cooked on Obamacare and how the numbers change when the smoke and mirrors are removed. Then at the end of the hearing, the Republicans need to package it into a neat little sound bite summary, appropriate for use in one or two minute ads ripping the left for being dishonest and wildly reckless with Obamacare and our economy.

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Losing The MESSAGING WAR Yet Again - This Time On Obamacare

When will our Congresscritters on the right figure out that their messaging is absolutely broken. They may be on the side of the angels, but as long as the left dominates the MSM, they have to work three times harder to get their message out.

Specifically what I am referring to was the left's gambit of having the CBO send a letter on day one of the 112th Congress asserting that repeal of the monstrosity of Obamacare would add $270 billion to the deficit.

Here is reality:

Ryan said this afternoon at the National Press Club that the only reason a Congressional Budget Office letter claims the national health care law will reduce the deficit--i.e. bring in more revenue through tax hikes and Medicare cuts than it spends on Obamacare--is because "the books have been severely cooked"--not by the CBO but by the Democrats who wrote the bill.

"CBO has to score what you put in front of them," Ryan explained. "And if you put a bill in front of them that ignores the discretionary cost of the $115 billion you need to spend to run this new Obamacare program, that double counts the Medicare savings, that double counts the CLASS Act revenue, that double counts the Social Security revenue, that does not count the "Doc Fix"--you add all that stuff up, net it out, we're talking about a $701 billion hole--deficit."

"So if you actually do real accounting, get away the smoke-and-mirrors, get away the budget gimmicks, this thing is a huge deficit-increaser. . . .

That's great. But if the general public doesn't hear it, it is useless. Every Republican in Congress should be jumping up and down on camera calling the left lying sob's for having CBO write this piece of fantasy and trying to sell it to the American people. Otherwise, what will happen is what I just watched a few minutes ago - on Studio B no less - where the story was Republicans pusshing ahead with an attempt to repeal Obamacare even though the CBO will add $270 billion to the deficit. End of story. Absolutely f*** incompetent idiots.

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The CBO Healthcare Story . . . & The Rest Of The Story

The lead article at the Washinton Post at the moment:

CBO: $940 billion health bill would help cut deficit over 10 years

An emerging compromise on health care between House and Senate Democrats would cost $940 billion over the next decade and expand insurance coverage to an additional 32 million Americans, congressional budget analysts said Thursday. Their preliminary report suggests the two-part legislation would bring the nation closer to universal health coverage than at any time in its history.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure would make insurance available to an estimated 95 percent of non-elderly citizens by dramatically expanding Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, and offering tax credits to an estimated 24 million Americans who would otherwise find it difficult to afford coverage. . . .

And, to borrow from the late great radio personality, Paul Harvey, "now for the rest of the story:"

The Washington Post and Politico are blaring headlines about these claimed savings.

However, House Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan (WI) issued the following statement:

“The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that there is currently no official cost estimate. Yet House Democrats are touting to the press – and spinning for partisan gain – numbers that have not been released and are impossible to confirm. Rep. James Clyburn stated he was “giddy” about these unsubstantiated numbers. This is the latest outrageous exploitation by the Majority – in this case abusing the confidentiality of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office – to pass their massive health care overhaul at any cost.”

I just asked a highly-placed Senate source about the numbers, and why the Republicans weren’t talking about the bizarre assumptions – savings over time that are assumed but won’t happen, rosy scenarios about cost reductions and tax revenues and the like -- that are the only foundation on which CBO could have reached their conclusions.

The short answer is that the Republicans (at least the Senate Republicans) haven’t been allowed to see the report yet.

Maybe Pelosi deems them to have seen it.

And this is American democracy? Find my tar, feathers . . . and perhaps some rope. We need not only to get the progressives in office, we damn well need to visit a few newspaper offices.

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Cap, Trade & Tax

The latest from the NRCC, an ad, as Hot Air points out, that is virtually written by the left.



The initial estimate of cap and trade's cost to American's was pegged at just under $4,000 per family. Since then, the CBO has come out with a ridiculously low ball estimate of $175 per household. That seems to be utterly ridiculous actually, given not only the direct effects of this tax, but the indirect effects that will be equally as problematic. The Heritage Foundation released their take on the CBO estimate a few days ago:

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that had proponents of the bill claiming Americans could save the planet for just $175 per household. That was the figure CBO estimated cap and trade would cost households in 2020 alone.

Both the CBO's analysis and the subsequent legislation are troubled: The analysis grossly underestimates economic costs while the legislation will have virtually no impact on climate. Overall, there are a number of basic problems with CBO's analysis:

- Their allowance cost numbers do not add up;

- They ignore economic costs such as the decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) as a result of the bill; and

- The analysis is an accounting analysis, not an economic analysis. . . .

Read the entire article. (H/T Terry Trippany)

Looking at the whole mosaic of what will be impacted by the cap and trade bill - which is every good, service and person that uses energy, plus the costs we will incur from a declining domestic energy industry - I am inclined to see the $4k estimate as much more realistic. It is good to see the NRCC ad on this most ill advised of legislative proposals. Republicans should be beating their chests over this on a daily basis.

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Random Thoughts & Links

ABC News is preparing to do an hourlong infomercial from the Whitehouse for Obama's socialized medicine plan. Moreover, ABC has refused air time to opponents of this massive boondogle. This is unprecedented. Forget the wall between church and state, we need a wall between media and state.

The only thing resembling news from the big three comes from ABC's Jake "Huevos Grande " Tapper.

The CBO is putting the cost of the socialized healthcare at 1.6 trillion over ten years, though that includes the start-up years when costs are low. If you look at the ten year stretch once socialized healthcare is fully in force, that price tag is topping 2 trillion. And all of that is only expected to take care of 1/3 of those currently uninsured. How's that for a deal.

The left is getting holier than thou because Sen John Ensign has admitted that, during the time he was separated from his wife, he had an affair with a married woman. Firedoglake points out that Ensign called for Clinton's ouster after the Lewinsky affair. Two problems - Ensign has never lied about his affair and, of far greater importance, he didn't commit perjury by lying about it under oath.

Does the left think that it is doing itself any favors by protecting its ethically challenged members? 2010 is coming soon, and the Dems protecting Chris "friend of Angelo" Dodd are just adding more water to the swamp they were supposed to drain.

Dodd may not be going to jail - yet - but it seems that John Conyer's wife is.

A Drudge headline reads "Carter escapes assassination attempt in Gaza." How many questions does that whole scenario raise?

Doug Ross has a pictorial on "Our Vanishing Rednecks." It's hilarious.

Calvin Cline has gone past the line of even a patina of acceptability with their latest gang bang billboard ad.

Richard over at Belmont Club tells some of the truths about Iran and accurately hits a nail on the head when he takes Obama to task for continuing his indications that he will go forward with unconditional talks with Iran. Little he could do at the moment would be more counterproductive.

Jose Padilla was part of an al Qaeda plot to create and detonate a dirty bomb in America. Now he wants to sue the attorneys who approved of harsh interrogation techniques in the Bush Administration. It would be hard to imagine a clearer case where qualified immunity should apply - not to mention the precedent set by the recent SCT case on much the same topic - but a SF judge has allowed the case to continue. There need to be term limits for federal judges and a yearly review of their decisions. Things like this are ridiculous.

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The NYT & Orwellian Newmath - Its All Bush's Deficit

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. . . .

. . . You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama. . . .

New York Times, America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making, 10 June 2009

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that President Obama’s budget and deficit projections are too low. The president’s budget will incur $9.3 trillion in federal deficits between 2010 and 2019 --$2.3 trillion higher than Obama had originally claimed. . . .

In fact, the budget office found that Obama’s projected deficits are more than double what they would be if the president had merely stuck with the current spending and taxation proposals left by the Bush administration.

. . . Obama’s record deficits mean a record national debt – one that totals $17 trillion, up from the current $6.7 trillion.

By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.

CNS News, Obama’s Deficit Projections Off by $2.3 Trillion, Congressional Budget Office Says, 24 March 2009

There is no way of getting around the fact that Bush was fiscally irresponsible. Indeed, as I was fond of saying on this blog, he and Republican Congress spent like drunken Democrats. But Obama and the Democratic left are in a class unto themselves, redefining the word "profligate."



So Bush leaves office with about a $500 billion defecit. Obama comes in, borrows and spends the deficit up by orders of magnitude, yet the NYT would have us believe the deficit Obama is running is mostly Bush's fault.

And indeed, It would seem impossible to reconcile the seperate conclusions quoted above of the non-partisan CBO, analyzing their own data, and the ulta-partisan NYT analysis of the exact same data. The NYT is asking us to take a leap out of the realm of rationality and into the world of fantasy, where Democrats bear no responsiblity for their actions and any ill effects are the work of evil Republicans. Ridiculous.

Although the NYT never shows their math, two things are obvious from the NYT individual conclusions. One, their analysis is static - by that, I mean the type of analysis where the NYT accounts for a 10% tax increase as equaling a 10% increase in actual revenues. I don't think they even teach that simplistic notion in Econ 101 anymore.

Two, the NYT's ignores the impact of Obama's policies on business and the economy. There is nothing that Obama has done that can be expected to stimulate growth in our economy. Instead, what we see are a bevy of policies that will, across the board, increase the costs of living and doing business in the U.S. For example, there is this gem from the NYT:

Some of [Obama's] proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money.

Wow. How many things are wrong with that statement. One, the NYT is doing an analysis that conflates our economy with the federal government. But our GDP does not come from government printing presses, it comes from private enterprise and private individuals creating the value which comprises the GDP. If the government money supply is in line with it, then we see a stable economy. Whether cap and trade is a direct expense of government is only a portion of the analysis. Whether cap and trade is a cost that detracts from GDP, thus indirectly effecting government revenues, is an equally necessary consideration.

Cap and trade will create a massive regressive tax on our economy. That will take money away from private enterprise and individuals, siphoning it to rent seekers such as Al Gore who produce nothing that adds value, and with a portion going back to the government. So all other things being equal, a tax of this magnitude will slow down if not smother growth, it will result in less avaialble capital across the board with which to invest and/or consume, and all of that means lower revenues flowing into government coffers.

Then there is this other gem from the NYT:

Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000.

Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't Obama been promising to pay for all of his socialist goodies by not paying for a surge in Iraq extending out for a decade. I have no idea what assumptions the NYT adopted here vis a vis Iraq - again, they don't show their math - but I do know that Obama has been blowing smoke up our nethers for months with his claims about funding and the Iraq war. How that factors into the 'newmath' of the NYT is anyone's guess, but I'd eat my hat if the assumptions they use are even remotely realistic.

And the last bit there from the NYT is that maintaining the Bush tax cuts means Bush is responsible for x dollars that would otherwise be collected to reduce the deficit under higher taxes. That seems to be the part that all on the left just can't get through their class warfare muddled brains.

Tax policy is dynamic, not static. History tells us that keeping taxes low expands the economy at a quicker pace. Yes, we get a smaller percentage of the pie - and our class warriors don't get that warm comfy feeling as they go to sleep knowing that our government just stole 50% or so of the wealth from all the rich evil capitalists in our country. But the evil capitalists invest their money and the pie grows for everyone. That increases revenues into the government. It did under JFK. It did under Reagan. It did under Bush. Indeed, if you take a look at 2002 through 2004, after the Bush tax cut, you see the fastest increase in tax receipts ever recorded.

Obviously if that is true, then the reverse must also true. The NYT is using static calculations to assess that the failure to go from, say, a 10% tax on a $1,000 to a 15% tax means that Bush is responsible $50 of the debt. The NYT authors are either wholly ignorant or being deliberately disingenuous. If increasing taxes retards growth - and it always does - instead of netting an extra $50, we might only net $40 in year one and something similar in succeeding years, whereas with the tax cuts, we will eventually surpass the $140 mark and leave it far behind while staying at a 10% tax.

The bottom line, the NYT just published a ludicrous news article of pure fiction. The last time I heard such disingenous utter bull from the left was when they were screaming in front of every microphone that the fall of Enron - a company whose accounting misdeeds took place under Clinton's watch over a period of years - was somehow the fault of the months old Bush regime. Spin is one thing. Outright lies are entirely another. And all of this falls into the latter category.

Oh, and by the way, those Clinton surpluses the NYT mentions - all smoke and mirrors. They came from turning Social Security into a ponzi scheme and accounting social security receipts as part of the Congress's general funds.

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