The CBO can only score the bill they are sent. The Dems wrote the bill, with virtually no changes from Reps. After this little bit of showmanship, a revised bill will be sent to the CBO that reflects the Reps ideas/assumptions and they will score it, again, solely by what is contained within it.
Also, if the courts rule favorably concerning the mandate (unconstitutional), everything changes dramatically. As we were told countless times prior to the bills passing, the mandate is the lynchpin of the legislation. If that’s taken out, none of the numbers work. This is when Obama and team were swearing up and down that it was NOT a tax. Now that they have to defend their position in actual court, well, they defend it by saying…ahem…"of course it’s allowed—it’s a tax!
Boy, some people, hunh? After the Pubbies have been so honest and straightforward about “death panels” and such, the Dems get all sneaky and underhanded! Why, its liberal hypocrisy!
Using “death panels” is a characterization that I roll my eyes at, but that’s that usual type of dumb gamesmanship both parties are guilty of. On the other hand, arguing for months that something is NOT a tax, then using the tax argument when they find themselves in a corner might be characterized as hypocrisy. A more accurate characterization would be “flat-out lies”.
But you go right on trying to create some false equivalencies. Guess that’s easier than calling a liar an liar when he’s your boy.
So that’s a “flat out lie”. We gasp in horror. But calling end of life counseling “death panels”, that doesn’t quite rise to the level of a “flat out lie.” I see. Yes.
Here’s the difference, with “death panels”, “death tax”, “pro life”, “pro choice”, “make the rich pay their ‘fair share’”, either side is characterizing a position. None is necessarily outright wrong, or right. It’s a “from where I sit” characterization, peppered with some hyperbole.
With the mandate, Obama and his team swore up and down that “no, it is NOT a tax”. When the right tried to say that it must be a tax, because that’s the only way the government would have the authority collect that kind of money, they said clearly, repeatedly and forcefully, “no, it is not a tax, it is a mandate”.
But now, when forced to defend it in court, it’s “of course we can do this…it’s a tax!”
Surely, even a partisan such as yourself can see the difference.
maggie the fact that you can call a claim that there were “death panels” as part of the healthcare reform act a mere “characterizing a position” and not “outright wrong” makes any other statement you may make not worth reading or responding to.
The “death panel” statement was not political posturing or spin or even prevarication. It was not calling gray white when it is politically advisable and black when such is. It was an out and out made up lie and part of a package of lies that were made up about the healthcare reform package and that the media added and abetted in getting legs because it sold copy.
And if it does pass will that sate the carnivorous desires of those who party with tea? Getting rid of that provision (while coming up with some other means to make up the money it is planned to bring in) is working at the margins to improve the plan. It will please some small business owners and (assuming the presumed shortfall is found better elsewhere) make good sense. It might give moderates on both sides a chance to show that yes they can work together to improve the imperfect. But after the names they have called this bill, working together to improve it will not be something that party leadership will be able to trumpet.
The nightmare scenario for the GOP is a fully implemented public health care system in the US:
*a major policy win for the D’s
a major cut to private health care profit* and* as with all other 1st world countries, the US public will not abide any rollback or repeal
most importantly, an irrefutable and empirical edifice that collapses GOP ideology; to wit public v private. *
Broadly speaking, the lack of a public health system is why the US is centered to the right of other 1st world countries. In this respect the GOP is facing down only bad outcomes from the debate. It’s policy is to pursue the least worse outcome, that is those backfire outcomes already discussed.
Otherwise later on, its constituency will oblige and require the GOP to propose public health repeal or rollback, which will doom it for decades. Again see the evidence of rw parties and public health systems elsewhere.
Understand what this says: it says that the only reason the health care bill decreases the deficit is because it raises 770 billion revenue but only has 540 billion in spending.
This puts the health care bill in better perspective - it’s not saving money, it’s a new entitlement that adds 540 billion dollars in new government spending, and raises 770 billion in tax money to pay for it. So one way to look at it is that repealing it would result in a reduction in government spending of 540 billion dollars, and therefore the taxes do not need to be raised to pay for it. This leaves 740 billion dollars the private economy. If you want to make repealing it deficit neutral, all you’d have to do is add back the $230 billion in additional revenue by making the Bush tax cut package that much smaller. That would make repeal deficit neutral, but would leave an additional 510 billion dollars in the private economy.
That shows you that the health care bill is anti-stimulative - and almost the same size as the Obama stimulus plan.
Up to the point of choosing the phrase “anti-stimulative” that seemed a pretty fair assessment and a much wiser spin of the CBO numbers than merely saying that the CBO assessment was “a joke”.
Yes, repeal would prevent the 0.9% increase on Medicare Part A for individuals making over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000, and it would prevent implementation of fees imposed upon insurers, medical device manufacturers, and a few others. That’s how it was paid for. Apparently more than paid for. Of course reform pretty much left alone the subsidy for healthcare insurance that those wealthier individuals gets by way of the payroll tax exemption and getting rid of that, which actually McCain had promoted some, would have made the most sense, and … well honestly, those debates have been had and the Reform Act is Law.
The fact is that repeal would cut revenues without paying for those cuts and increase the deficit. More money going into pockets of the wealthier among us forever is not a stimulus; it is just growing the deficit. At some point you do need to pay back.
So do GOP leaders stop calling the CBO a joke and try to finesse that they want to cut more revenues without saving as much as they cut and spin spin spin? Do they now say they are trustworthy again because they can take something positive out of what they say? It is hard to play yourself as concerned about the deficit as you do things that will grow it.
But this thread was not put up to debate the Reform Act; it was put up to discuss how a, to put it in the best light, quixotic attempt to repeal it will play out. I maintain that prolonged fight that results in little to nothing, maybe 1099-MISC reform, will not help them, their interests, or the interests of this country. Do you conclude otherwise?
Right, this vote, and the title of the bill itself, are a condescending sop to the teahadists. It fails, they can say “Hey, we tried, but those Dems and their entrenched special interests and their hatred of true Americans, ya know?”
Boehner and probably McConnell likely want to get this over with early and quietly, so the backwash from the effort dissipates long before next year’s primaries. Even Cantor doesn’t want a debate (and TV coverage), saying the bill was already “litigated”.
How is a 740 billion dollar tax increase not anti-stimulative? Especially since everyone acknowledges that the taxes start years before any actual benefits to the economy come back?
The taxes aren’t only on the rich. The tax on medical devices will be passed right on down to the consumers, and I see a lot of poor and middle class people using medical devices.
In addition, there are taxes and penalties on businesses, which also get translated into either reduced salaries on employees or lower employment. Or did you think employers would just ‘suck it up’ and pull money magically out of the air?
And of course, there’s supposed to be an individual mandate, which is a direct tax on the working poor. Yes, there will be government subsidies for the poorest of them, but families who do not have health care and who make incomes above $40,000 or so will see an impact on their take-home pay. And the subsidies vanish completely by the time you get to family incomes of $80,000, which is still well in the middle class. Those families in that range who do not have health care coverage now will be fined $4500 per year ($2250 per adult), which is a big hit to their disposable income.
Now, you can argue that they should be paying that to carry their fair share, and that in return they’ll get coverage from an exchange, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are forcing them to pay more money than they otherwise would have paid, which makes it anti-stimulative.
Another thing that makes the bill anti-stimulative is that employers have been told they may be fined $3,000 per employee, even if they already offer a health care plan, if their employees choose to opt out of their plan and seek coverage in the exchanges.
This is obviously to prevent employers from offering some useless faux-coverage to get around the law, but in effect it means that employers are now facing a future where they may have to upgrade their coverage or face fines, and they have no idea how much that will cost them because the bureaucracy has not yet written the detailed regulations that would allow them to calculate the potential costs. This adds risk to hiring full time employees today - which could be part of the reason why temp hiring and contract employment is growing like mad.
Another thing that makes it anti-stimulative is that the 1099 requirements impose further costs on ALL businesses. That’s not even estimated in the cost of the bill, because it’s a hidden cost absorbed in the economy. But it’s a cost nonetheless.
Yes, canceling a proposed tax means higher deficits. Of course you always have the option of cutting spending a bit, you know? For example, just removing the increases the Dept. of Education got in the last two or three years would more than cover it. You’re talking about finding about $23 billion a year in budget cuts, which is really pretty small.
Oh, but we forgot - the health care bill was counting on $500 billion in Medicare cuts. So get rid of the bill, but keep the medicare cuts, and you just improved the deficit by $270 billion over ten years. Problem solved. Unless you don’t believe those Medicare cuts would happen, in which case the health bill doesn’t reduce the deficit at all, but actually increases it by $270 billion over ten years.
No one, including me, has said the CBO is a joke. I said that the deficit score is a joke, primarily because the CBO is constrained by the assumptions baked into the bill, and the assumptions were cooked to get the result the bill authors were looking for. Both sides use the CBO as a political tool this way. The CBO is non-partisan and is set up this way precisely so it doesn’t become another agency putting its own partisan spin on things. So this isn’t the CBO’s fault - it’s the fault of the congress, and it’s also the fault of the partisans on both sides who use the CBO’s various reports as if they are peer-reviewed statements of fact or projections of the most likely future. They’re not.
A Republican can go to the CBO and say, “Score my tax bill, using the assumptions in this paper that cutting taxes will grow the economy and raise revenue.” And the CBO will score it that way, and the politician will then run around saying, “See? Even the CBO says my tax will raise revenue!”.
So the best the CBO can do is make it clear that they had to respond to the assumptions and add many caveats to the document about this being a speculative result, etc. The CBO put language like that all through their scoring of the health care bill. You just need to actually read it instead of parroting the talking points of your side.