Will, Brooks mislead on deficit reduction in health care reform
Columnists George Will and David Brooks both claimed that the deficit reduction provisions of the Senate health care bill are, in Brooks' words, "totally bogus" because "it has 10 years of taxes and six years of benefits." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the Senate bill will not only reduce budget deficits through 2019, but will continue to reduce deficits in the following decade.
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Will, Brooks claim deficit reduction is "bogus" and due to "10 years of taxes and six years of benefits"
Brooks: "[A] lot of the deficit control is totally
bogus." Appearing on the March 14 edition
of NBC's Meet the Press, Brooks
said he "lean[s] against" health care reform, in part because "a lot of the
deficit control is totally bogus." Brooks added: "We're [going to] have 10 years of revenue to pay
for six years of costs."
Will: Legislation's deficit reduction is due to "accounting gimmicks." On the March 14 edition of ABC's This Week, host Jake Tapper said to Will, "[F]ormer Congressman Ray LaHood ... has an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune today talking about why, as a member of the House, he would have voted for this bill, because this bill reduces the deficit, and it also brings down health care costs and it will make insurance more affordable. Do you believe that he would have voted for it as a Republican congressman?" Will replied: "Not a bit. It reduces the deficit because you have 10 years of taxes and six years of benefits and other accounting gimmicks."
In fact, CBO has estimated Senate and House bills will continue to reduce deficits after 2019
CBO expects Senate bill to continue deficit reduction during decade after 2019. From the March 11 CBO estimate of the Senate health care bill:
CBO expects that the legislation, if enacted, would reduce federal budget deficits over the decade after 2019 relative to those projected under current law -- with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP. That judgment is unchanged from CBO's previous assessment, and the imprecision of that calculation reflects the even greater degree of uncertainty that attends to it, compared with CBO's 10-year budget estimates.
CBO estimated the House bill will also result in deficit reductions in the decade after 2019. From the November 6 CBO estimate:
According to CBO and JCT's assessment, enacting H.R. 3962 would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2010-2019 period (see Table 1) [this estimate was later updated to $138 billion over the same period]. In the subsequent decade, the collective effect of its provisions would probably be slight reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty.
Please do. Because that's what the projections are based upon.
The CBO is not saying "no matter what changes/additions get made to this HCR, it'll reduce the deficit", you doofus. It's saying that THIS program, AS CONFIGURED currently, will cost less than doing nothing.
So stop distorting reality and making strawman arguments about other programs that were greatly expanded and therefore cost much more than the original configuration!
It is inevitable that some of CBO's output will be wrong and some of it will be annoying to one political party or the other, either because mistakes were made or good analysis was badly timed. But if one adds up the impressive volume of CBO cost estimates, analyses, and forecasts, a remarkably high portion is non-controversial and a remarkably low portion really makes someone angry.
The current blog post is about how Will and Brooks are distorting facts in order to push their viewpoint/agenda. It isn't about the CBOs job of providing cost estimates on proposed legislation.
And the CBO says these policy changes will improve the baseline. Thanks for the link.
But you already knew that, didn't you?
Anyone who believes this bill would cut the deficit is delusional. Why did the Dems take the doctor fix off budget? In and of itself this is a lie - they are monkeying with the numbers?
If they attached the doctor fix to the bill, would the CBO say it is deficit neutral? What a load of total crap!
Everything about this administration is phony!
This said from the exorcist fan. LOL!
Why yes Barry did make that statement several times with conviction! Now that is has plowed into double digit territory and hovers about 10% Barry and his willing minions in the media are trying to plant the seed that this is the new NORM in America.
Barry has been so focused on this health care boondoggle that he's letting the economy run through the open gates.
It is something of a Sissyphean endeavour to convince some of you to look at the objective numbers, but if you do, you will realize every claim BHO makes is entirely specious.
Read page 2069. I dare you. Read that page and tell me that killing babies at taxpayer expense is not in this bill. It clearly is.
IT is completely true, that they are factoring ten years of revenue against six years of spending. What happens in the four out years?
And death panels most certainly are in the bill. They are called QARS (Quality Adjusted Remaining Years). A bureaucrat panel will decide whether if is cost efficient to treat you. If it is not, you will be denied life saving medical care. This is a death panel and it is precise the item to which Gov. Palin was referring when she rang the alarm bell on teh death panels.
We should leave healthcare as it is. I trust the insurance companies FAR more than I do the government. The government is incompetent and corrupt.
This bill would be an unmitigated disaster. This bill is the first incremental step toward a complete governmen takeover of healthcare -- how do I know this? Barney Frank explicitly stated as much. I appreciate Barney's honesty and candor (he is more of a man that little Barry Hussein Soetero), but this bill would ruin this country.
There ARE no death panels. Never have been. It's a lie. And Stupak's interpretation of what the bill says and allows WRT abortion has been debunked countless times, so you're lying about what page 2069 says.
And he also lies by omission, by discussing how much this new program will cost without taking into consideration how much doing nothing will cost and how some of the costs of the reform is covered.
The CBO is not stupid or incompetent, and so they HAVE done all the calculations they should have, and HCR will REDUCE the deficit.
If he doesn't understand HOW that will happen, then he's just too uneducated to deserve much attention here, so please, don't feed this troll.
Let them have to make the decision to cut off a loved one's leg to save their life from infection, then argue with the insurance company whether it was a needed procedure. Let them have to spend Christmas in a hospital because their loved one has a flu virus and they're so weakened by their "pre-existing condition" that there's a good chance they'll die.
Let's see how they react when the private insurance company drops said loved one because the expense of prolonged care is becoming "cost prohibitive". Then rush to try and get them on the VA or Medicare because you can't afford to keep them in their nursing facility.
Finally, let them have to make the decision whether or not to try a risky procedure that you're told they probably won't survive, do another procedure that may keep them alive for a little while longer but probably won't work anyway, or let end come as it does and have the doctors just try and make them comfortable.
Let them have to do those things and then continue to throw around the phrase "death panel".
I did all that...then a few months later turned 30 and had been doing those things since I was 16.
Nobody is saying that it is. What they are saying is that 10 years of revenues and 10 years of costs = a deficit reduction of of 116 billion dollars a year.
Brooks' and Wills' statements are 'bogus' because they imply that the deficit reductions are only produced becauseof the difference in revenue years and cost years.
Congress knows that if amnesty occurs first, the deficit numbers will skyrocket.