McArdle on the CBO score
Shorter McArdle: the CBO scoring has become a joke, and the bill is a financial disaster. But nobody who wants to vote for it is listening or cares.
[NOTE: A while back, I made a similar point as McArdle on the uselessness of the CBO at this point. Congress has become like a virus that has figured out how to penetrate the defenses of the CBO scoring and overwhelm whatever truth it used to offer.]
See this article on what the Democrats really know about the truth behind the CBO numbers and the “cuts” that are supposed to make this bill deficit neutral:
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/EXCLUSIVE__Democrats_plan_doc_fix_after_reform.html?showall
Oh, drat. Here is the same link tinyurled:
http://tinyurl.com/ylxmehw
Being an ex-accountant, I am familiar with the infinite ways in which numbers can be arranged and re-arranged to contrive any manner of result.
That being said, I have not trusted one thing the “non-Partisan”
CBO has issued since Obama took office, and upon receiving a negative scoring on one of his first attempted pieces of proposed legislation, Obama hauled the head of the CBO, Dr. Douglas Elmendorf, into the Oval Office. And wouldn’t you know….neither Obama nor his Democratic leadership has since received a scoring that disputed their claims of savings, viability, or budget “neutrality.”
Incidentally, Elmendorf happens to be a Democrat and used to be at the Brookings Institution.
all these billions make my head spin – what a gigantic waste!
csimon: I’m not an accountant, but I suspected something like this from the start of the rosy prognoses. It’s the same sad story (I’m tired of saying it, too), like in ex-SU; whole scientific institutes were engaged in crunching “appropriate” numbers – which fooled nobody.
But only after 80 years of being told blatant lies…
I think CBO uses the same computer modeling as global warming scientist. I think its called the consensus
The CBO is a joke: they might as well all stay home so we can save their salaries. You can’t cost out a proposal unless all the relevant acts are considered, not just the ones that prove your case. Remember the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” These CBO reports are a monumental waste of time–as is most everything else the government tries to do.
Any system can be gamed – it is just a matter of learning the rules the system works by. Some systems are harder to game – the Dems are seeing that right now with what they are trying to do.
It isn’t about health care – were it they would have forced the Republicans into a traditional filibuster (and the senate majority leader has the authority to do so) and we would have had whatever bill they could get 51 people to vote for *months* ago. Indeed, we would probably have had a centralized single-payer system with so much of the private market (even outside of the insurance companies) nationalized that it would make our heads spin. They had the ability to do so if they wanted.
It is about control and has been for some time. There was no need for the so called “nuclear option” back when the republicans wanted to do it – they too could have made it an opposition run circus (even more so – given the state of HCR Republicans filibustering the bill may have very well increased their popularity). It was about process and control and I think most now are happy that the idea failed (even though the idea of filibustering a SCOTUS judge that is fit for office was wrong – see Sotomayor for it not happening even though she was worse that either Thomas or Roberts by large margin even if you discount political leanings).
There is that and I do not think the Dems have the confidence in the bill to let them all take the blame for it. I think they initially needed Republican support to shift blame when it fails. For that it is too late (the RINO’s started that way but the Tea Party stuff made their re-election too vague for comfort), they own it now no matter what and it has simply become a question of power and control. As such I do not see anyway they can win as anyone other than the highly partisan consider such things to be in bad form.