CBO Numbers: Smoke And Mirrors

I'm not going to pretend to be a budget wonk but aside from the fact that the CBO projections are based on the 'facts' provided to them by Democratic leadership, the Director of the CBO says this isn't a real estimate (pdf)

Although CBO completed a preliminary review of legislative language prior to its release, the agency has not thoroughly examined the reconciliation proposal to verify its consistency with the previous draft. This estimate is therefore preliminary, pending a review of the language of the reconciliation proposal, as well as further review and refinement of the budgetary projections.

In other words, they don't really know yet since the bill hasn't been provided in it's final form.

Consider this little factoid from Eric Cantor's office.

Even after Dems cut $500 B in Medicare & raises taxes, their claims of deficit reduction over 10yrs won’t erase 1 month of 2010 deficit.

So even if there magical assumptions all come true (and they won't), the net reduction in the deficit is essentially zero. We're going to rework the entire health care system and if everything goes right, we won't even eliminate one month of deficits?

And just how gimmicky is this budgeting?

CBO: HC bills would cost $17 billion in first 4 years, $923 billion in remaining 6 years!

Does anyone have any faith in the numbers from the CBO for next year, let alone 5-10 years from now when the costs explode?

This is insanity.

The question is, will enough Democrats who claim to worry about the deficits drink this Kool-Aid and consider this a sufficient fig leaf to go over the cliff with Nancy? I fear the answer is yes.

posted by DrewM. at 12:41 PM

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