Kilmeade doesn't even understand his own explanations of the health care bill
March 19, 2010 12:28 pm ET by Christine Schwen
Today on Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade decided to bring his own patented brand of cluelessness to Fox's coordinated effort to dismiss the CBO's score of the health care reform reconciliation package.
Instead of just saying he doesn't trust the CBO score, like so many of his Fox News colleagues, Kilmeade took it one step farther, declaring that "it doesn't make any sense" that the bill could cost $940 billion while saving $130 billion:
KILMEADE: When the average person who -- and I think 99 percent our people are not economists that are watching right now -- say if a plan costs $940 billion, tell me how I'm saving $130 billion. So it doesn't make any sense. And by the way, while insuring 30 million more Americans
It sounds like someone needs to to tell Kilmeade about the revenue generating provisions of the bill and its cuts to Medicare, which raise enough money to more than cover the legislation's spending provisions. Here, maybe Kilmeade from one hour earlier can help:
KILMEADE: And also they're gonna increase taxes on individuals making over $200,000 and families who earn over $250,000. So when you talk about why this thing that's going to reduce the deficit by $138 billion, they claim, well someone's paying for that. Paying down -- the most successful people are paying down - an investment tax on those that are deciding to be creative and grow their income -- are gonna pay a price.
And here's co-host Dana Perino during the same program:
So, either Kilmeade is intentionally misleading his audience in order to dismiss the non-partisan CBO's estimate of the bill, or his colleague Megyn Kelly was more right than she realized when she said of the bill, "no one gets it." Quite a few of her Fox colleagues don't seem to.
Most people that watch FOX are either conservatives or the dems that want a "gotcha" moment. I assume the latter group is pretty small and mostly made up of trust funders with nothing better to do.
It's really not that complicated, but their insistence on pushing that number DOES confuse things.
They fail, every time, to put that number in context - to realize that the number should be compared to how much it will cost if we do nothing. People don't understand how much healthcare provision already costs!