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How Much?!

From The Hill: The comprehensive health reform legislation will cost $940 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Thursday.

The nonpartisan budget office told lawmakers that the health bill set for a vote this weekend would cut the deficit by $130 billion over the next decade, and $1.2 trillion in the second decade of the plan's implementation.

...Wow. This is the part where the GOP calls the CBO a bunch of partisan hacks... that is until they get a set of numbers from the same nonpartisan group more in line with what they think the numbers should show, namely blow the deficit out of the water to the point that we'll be living in grass huts within five years. (AAARRGH! FEAR! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!)  But that's never going to happen.  Republican "fiscal conservative" heads explode in 5... 4... 3...

The CBO's Sky Is Falling... Again.

Last week the GOP's collective hair was on fire when the always reliable CBO said that the health care reform being worked out in Congress would add to the deficit, not reduce it. I also predicted that within days, the CBO would come out with another statement amending the Chicken Little assessment.

Bingo.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for the first time that H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act, is deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window - and even produces a $6 billion surplus. CBO estimated more than $550 billion in gross Medicare and Medicaid savings. More importantly, the bill includes a comprehensive array of delivery reforms to set the stage for lowering the future growth in health care costs.

That was Friday. Yet, no one is talking about these CBO numbers, just as everyone ran for their bomb shelters to count their canned peaches stock the last time this happened, based on an incomplete or non-existant CBO report on the Obama administration's Recovery Plan.

I see a pattern developing.

The REAL CBO Report

According to Think Progress, this much ballyhooed Congressional Budget Office report that was used to criticize the Obama Recovery Bill by Republicans was cited 81 times in the last six days by the talking heads on television and in print; they criticized that spending was initally slow and that only 35% of the package would be spent by 2011.

There's just one problem with that: the CBO report they were citing doesn't exist. Rather, the media and Republican opposition to the bill were citing a partial report that didn't include the planned tax cuts, unemployment benefit extensions and numerous other factors. Even after Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained that everyone was citing an incomplete report in his press conference on Friday, inaccurate reporting continued on the news.

New Meet The Press host David Gregory used the CBO report in criticism on Sunday morning and I personally witnessed Nora O'Donnell on MSNBC ask about the partial report when questioning Congressman Chris Van Hollen late Monday afternoon! But I suppose if it isn't scandalous it doesn't sell, so why bother with accuracy?

Well guess what? The CBO actually released a complete report Monday evening which shows that, just as the Obama administration has been saying, about ¾ of the stimulus package would be injected into the economy within the first 18 months.

From the CBO report (emphasis mine):

This is the first cost estimate that CBO has prepared for H.R. 1 in its entirety. A previous preliminary estimate that has been widely cited addressed only the budgetary impacts of an earlier version of the provisions contained in Division A, at the request of the House Committee on Appropriations.

CBO has since made small changes to our estimates of the portion of the bill that was included in that preliminary estimate, mostly to reflect amendments to the legislation since we prepared the last estimate. Based on information provided by the committee and discussions with numerous state officials, we also made small technical changes to that earlier estimate.

I wonder how quickly the very serious mainstream media will report on this, and if they'll mention it 81 times in six days? I'm also sure the GOP will ignore it while tending to their fudge, since it doesn't fit into their agenda.

I mean, think about it. All we've heard the latest cheap Republican talking point is the expenditure of $200 million for Medicaid to be used for contraception and all the hysteria from the right asking how something like that can stimulate the economy. They are completely ignoring the fact that education, prevention of STDs and unwanted pregnancies can help in reducing governmental financial responsibilities later on. But the word "contraception" is a touchstone for their religious right base, even though the money planned for this program is only 0.00024% of the total package.

What's the GOP solution? More tax cuts. You know, because it's worked so well before.

(H/T Bob Cesca)