October 8, 2009
CBO analysis is meaningless

Posted at 9:26 am, in: Health Care
Tags: Congress, Jimmy Bise, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus

I was going to comment on the CBO’s annalysis of the Baucus health care bill, but why bother when someone else has already summed it up so well:

Last month, the Republicans members of the Senate Finance Committee asked to have the CBO score the bill introduced by Max Baucus (D-MT). The Democrats on the committee, led by Baucus and Kent Conrad said they’d only let the CBO do what it does best if it could use “plain language” wording instead of the far more precise legislative language and. Conrad patiently explained to all the dullards in America (which is 95 percent of us) that we couldn’t possibly understand the legislative language because it was all hard and stuff.

The head of the CBO, however, said there was no way his outfit could calculate the real cost of the bill without, well, the actual bill, deucedly difficult language and all. I guess he figured he was in the five percent Conrad was willing to allow could understand Congressspeak. Well, the Republicans’ proposal not to treat America like we’re drooling idiots failed on mostly a party line vote not once but twice.

Well, the CBO went ahead and scored the Baucus Summary (it’s not a bill until it’s written in legislative language. You know, like an actual law) and, lo and behold, it’s not a huge deficit-buster! In fact, it will reduce the deficit by $81 billion. Such a miracle, it is!

Except that it’s not actually a miracle. Just as the CBO said last month, there’s no way it can accurately gauge the cost of the bill until it’s actually a bill. What the CBO really scored were concepts, explained in the most Obamacare-friendly manner by the Democrats. Of course those concepts will end up saving money and spontaneously producing unicorns whose emanations smell like begonias. Experience teaches us otherwise, does it not?

Remember, though, this is the same government that thought their Cash for Clunkers program would cost $1 billion and that cash would last November. They upped the ante to $3 billion and they still ran out of cash and had to shut the program down early. Why should any of us have any faith in any other estimates, at this point? Has the government ever actually been correct in their estimate of how much a program would cost? I think not.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more on this ridiculousness.