Baucus: Yeah, My Plan Will Cost $2.5 Trillion, Just Like Republican Critics Say

Statement contrary to interest:

"Just for a second -- health care reform, whether you use a ten-year number or when you start in 2010 or start in 2014, wherever you start at, so it is still either $1 trillion or it's $2.5 trillion, depending on where you start…"

One trillion, two point five trillion; potato, pahtahtoh. It's so arbitrary how we cost this thing, eh? Such a minor point for Republicans to get hung up about.

Baucus is acknowledging the Democrats' health care bill doesn't actually start spending out any sort of real money (as real money is now defined) until four years in. And yet they use those four years as the first four years of their ten-year projection, ignoring the fact that for four years the costs are close to zero (well... according to how we now define "close to zero"). So their "ten year projection" is in fact only a six year projection, which is even more deceptive than that, because taxes are raised in all ten years.

Thus giving a very fake, very manipulated trendline. Ten years of inflow, six years of outflow. Why not compare apples-to-apples and graph the ten year window when this bastard is actually hemorrhaging out taxpayers' blood? Because, of course, that would show the true costs of this mammoth program.

In other words, they Democrats have discovered a "trick" to "hide the incline." Lot of that going around these days, eh?

Eh, can't argue. The politics are settled.

posted by Ace at 01:33 PM

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