I don’t talk about politics much here anymore, and I extra double especially have not been talking about health care reform, because on that topic, when I am not confused, I am disgusted. But I’m pretty sure Megan McCardle has it right when she says…
[T]his I am confident of: they’re not going to “pass this bill and then fix it”, and the people saying that this should be the priority of people who are against the bill… seem borderline delusional.
Those like my colleague Andrew, who want Republicans to turn to the task of improving this monstrous bill–how is that going to happen? The “fixes” are all the unpopular stuff–the taxes, the spending cuts. You think that now that Democrats got to hand out the goodies, Republicans are going to be the nasty folks who volunteer to hand around the bill for a law they didn’t even want to pass?
…There is one thing of which I am nearly perfectly certain: If we pass this thing, no American politician, left or right, is going to cut any of these programs, or raise the broad-based taxes necessary to pay for them, without any compensating goodies to offer the public… until the crisis is almost upon us. I can think of no situation, other than impending crisis, in which such a thing has been done–and usually, as with Social Security, they have done just little enough to punt the problem down the road. The idea that you pass a program of dubious sustainability because you can always make it sustainable later, seems borderline insane. I can’t think of a single major entitlement that has become more sustainable over time. Why is this one supposed to be different?
I’ll only add that any attempt to tell me that this health care bill will, in fact, reduce the deficit, will be met with a blank stare of incredulity. We haven’t even begun to learn all the accounting tricks that are loaded into this thing, and I trust the CBO’s assessment of the bill about as much as I trust Congress’s handling of it.
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So what’s the alternative?
*sigh*
The bill spends $950B over ten years, and offsets that by around $1.1T in spending cuts and tax increases. The spending/savings difference is even greater over the ten years after that. That’s not a gimmick, that’s just math. Now you may be skeptical that the tax increases/spending cuts will not materialize, but recall that if the bill is passed, it will require 60 votes to change any of the policies which are slated to go into effect.
I may be wrong about this, but I feel you’re starting with your conclusion. Health care increases the deficit, thus CBO is untrustworthy when it says it reduces the deficit. The CBO scored the *House* bill as increasing the deficit, and a number of liberal blogs were up in arms and refused to believe their assessment then–I disagreed then with the liberals, and I disagree now with the conservatives who are attacking the CBO since the new score isn’t what *they* wanted to hear.
I mean, I guess we’ll see. But here’s an article about how Clinton’s 1993 budget met with the same skepticism about its deficit-reducing potential, and I believe history speaks well as to how those predictions turned out. http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/health-care-reform-and-history
I don’t think it’s “attacking the CBO” to express the opinion that a massive health care bill will cost more — a lot more — than we are currently being told. It can only be “just math” if those pretty numbers actually turn out to be accurate. I very much doubt that will be the case.
Also, Clinton’s 1993 budget came on the cusp of one of the greatest boom periods in American history. That’s not exactly the economic situation we find ourselves in now.
“Attacking” was the wrong terminology to apply to you, though some (admittedly few) Republicans certainly have been attacking the CBO. “Questioning”, maybe. Medicare Part D ended up costing _less_ than the CBO estimate, FWIW, so it would be a mistake to assume that the way to find the true cost is to take the CBO estimate and pick a larger–much larger–number.
Re: Clinton, no analogy is perfect, I concede this point. I guess in general I wish your cynicism towards the claims of those making the accusations of gimmickry were as strong as that towards the government. McArdle, like everyone, like me, has an agenda.
For the sake of clarity: Eric, do you have a reason to mistrust the CBO’s assessment? From what I can tell from your post and your comment above, it kind of feels like your primary reason is that they came to a conclusion that strikes you as wrong. But there’s this huge gap between “I don’t like their conclusion” and “I don’t believe their conclusion”, and I’m having trouble seeing how you’re bridging it.
It’s Garbage In Garbage Out — I don’t mistrust the CBO’s assessment so much as what the government gave them to assess. I think this is going to be way more expensive than we are being told. Do I know that? No, but it’s a pretty good bet.
And in the same way that I’m concerned about the financial solidity of Social Security — a once-noble idea that has only gotten shakier and shakier as the decades have passed — I think HCR could well be a financial booby trap that makes a very serious bang down the road.
I’m still confused. What did the government give them to assess that you don’t trust? They sent them the language of a bill, said “how much will this cost”, and the CBO gave them an answer.
Jangler, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re acting like government bills being more expensive than expected is a completely unheard-of thing. There are assumptions running amok all over this thing, and some of them, many of them, are going to be wrong. It’s truly hard for me to fathom how it could be otherwise.
Then surely you can name one.
The CBO expects the bill will cost X, you think it’ll cost more than X. That’s distrusting the CBO, not what the government gave them.
(Sorry for the multiple comments in a row, but just to clarify: by “one”, I mean “one assumption” of the many that are running amok.)
One assumption, as you wish: I think that just because the government promises to cut X, Y, and Z, that is by no means a guarantee that X, Y, or Z will be cut.
It’s more than just a promise. The bill cuts X, Y, and Z (for some values of X, Y, and Z). Signing the bill causes those cuts to occur. Reversing those cuts would require getting 60 votes, as I said in my very first comment–I thought that’s what you were referring to and was trying to respond. I see I was too subtle.
Guys,
This “health care” bill was written by Big Pharma, pushed by its lobbyists, and passed by the members of congress they buy and sell like used cars.
It won’t cost $950 billion over 10 years any more than the Iraq War will pay for itself in six months. It won’t help poor and middle-class people get health care, it will transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and political class. This is the point of Washington, D.C.’s existence.
Our national debt is hitting $15 trillion very soon — it was $5 trillion just ten years ago — and will spiral completely out of control before Obama’s term is up. We are close to the point where we cannot even service the debt, much less ever repay it.
Bretton Woods I lasted from 1944 until 1971 when we essentially defaulted by leaving the gold standard. Bretton Woods 2 replaced it, a complete scam of a world monetary system based on unlimited dollar-printing backed up by the US military threatening or invading anyone who balked. It’s amazing that BW2 has lasted 39 years. It may make it to 40 but not 45. If I had to bet, not 42.
At that point we will see how academic this debate is. We have no money, we have had no money for decades, we are only now about to discover what that means. Buckle up. And if you want someone to blame, blame John Maynard Keynes and the Federal Reserve Bank and the concept of central banking in general.