ObamaCare's Reality Deficit

There's a great piece in the Wall Street Journal about the fraudulent accounting that allowed the Democrats to claim that Obamacare would reduce the deficit, and allows them now to attack the Republicans as deficit hypocrites for attempting to repeal it.

Of all the claims deployed in favor of ObamaCare, and there are many, the most preposterous is that a new open-ended entitlement will somehow reduce the budget deficit. Insure 32 million more people, and save money too! The even more remarkable spectacle is that Washington seems to be taking this claim seriously in advance of the House's repeal vote next week. Some things in politics you just can't make up.

Terminating trillions of dollars in future spending will "heap mountains of debt onto our children and grandchildren" and "do very serious violence to the national debt and deficit," Nancy Pelosi said at her farewell press conference as Speaker. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius chimed in that "we can't afford repeal," as if ObamaCare's full 10-year cost of $2.6 trillion once all the spending kicks in is a taxpayer bargain.

The basis for such claims, to the extent a serious one exists, is the Congressional Budget Office's analysis this week of the repeal bill, which projects it will "cost" the government $230 billion through 2021. Because CBO figures ObamaCare will reduce the deficit by the same amount, repealing it will supposedly do the opposite. The White House promptly released a statement saying repeal would "explode the deficit."

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The government can't subsidize coverage for tens of millions of new people and simultaneously reduce the deficit, as most Americans seem to intuitively understand. The real offense Republicans are committing in the eyes of Washington is exposing its illusions.

Read it all - there's a lot more, and it's all good...

"Fantasy in, fantasy out..."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, on the Democrats ludicrous claims that Obamacare will cut the deficit:

In other words, a bill that would set up two new entitlement spending programs — health insurance subsidies and long-term health care benefits — would actually improve the nation’s bottom line.

Could this really be true? How can the budget office give a green light to a bill that commits the federal government to spending nearly $1 trillion more over the next 10 years?

The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out.

In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion.

Fantasy in, fantasy out. I remain incredulous at how many people seem to be thrilled that they've been lied to by the President and the Congressional Leadership. There is no level on which this legislation is not a disaster in progress, a slow-motion train wreck.


And how did this piece ever get published in the New York Times?