Ruminations - 8oct2009

George Rebane

- ObamaCare’s deficits go “conceptual”
- Pelosi shows how VAT is not a tax on consumers
- Locals still confused about unfunded pension liabilities

The Washington Lies Factory is working overtime in the attempt to deliver something passable that can be labeled ObamaCare.  The Dems, led by Finance Committee Chairman Senator Baucus, have been pressuring the Congressional Budget Office to revise the damning estimates of their various bills’ deficit impacts over the next decade.  With some success they’ve gotten the CBO to go from $1 trillion to $597 billion to $245 billion in added deficits for the Senate versions of ObamaCare.  Now in a last big push, Baucus cajoled the CBO into looking at the latest “conceptual language” version of the Senate Finance Committee bill and issue a “score” for it.

With obvious heel marks on the floor, the CBO was reluctantly dragged into doing a “preliminary analysis” of the “conceptual” bill, and guess what?  It turns out that this version of ObamCare could reduce deficits by a conceptual $81 billion.  The CBO’s accompanying letter qualified this scoring by stating –

CBO and JCT’s (Joint Committee on Taxation) analysis is preliminary in large part because the (Finance Committee Bill), as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.

For those who track these things, Harry Reid now has to merge the Finance Committee bill with the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP, love that acronym) Committee bill, which then must be merged with the House version to create the final monstrosity that Obama will sign.  During this long process you will be told by the Dems and their MSM to keep your eye on that $81 billion deficit reduction number, no matter how conceptually preliminary its publication has been.

RR invites its more prescient readers to submit their predicted CBO score (ten year deficit increase/reduction) of the signed ObamaCare bill.  The winner will be appropriately recognized in these pages ;-)  Recall that every year Congress criminally cooks the books to balloon actual costs of any new bill after the expiration of its ‘sales window’ that was used to bamboozle the people.  So your prediction should make allowance for this perfidy.

On the same vein, we’ve now heard of Pelosi opening the door to a nationwide VAT (Value Added Tax).  Nancy explained to the sheeple watching PBS’s Charlie Rose show that this tax is paid by the producers at every stage of bringing the final product/service to market.  The beauty of it is that the consumer then doesn’t have to pay any tax at all. And therefore, the whole thing will not be counted as part of ObamaNation’s massive tax increases.  To think that such a brilliant mind was right there in the House of Representatives, unappreciated all these years.

Closer to home, there seems to be a deep and abiding ignorance about whose liability is the unfunded portion of the county and/or city pension obligations to their former employees.  Some local worthies continue in their deeply held faith that all sustenance and solutions come from Sacramento, and therefore that is direction we should orient our prayer rugs.  Not only that, but to expend effort in seeking responsible solutions to locally grown problems is a foolish waste of time.  The socialists forever turn their faces to higher powers from whence cometh all goodness and light, the source of our healing and sustenance, in its bosom we shall bask forever.  Amen.

Comments

[bill tozer]

Russ (subsequently corrected to 'George' in a private communication - gjr), the CBO scoring is a one day story. When the final bill gets written and passed. I predict it will be somewhere near 1.9 trillion. The out years will push it to over 3 trillion. Time will tell. What is apparent is that waiting times in doctors' offices in Boston have doubled due to MassachusettsCare. Public hospitals there are cutting wellness programs to compensate for the reduced reimbursements from the state. Yes, the public hospitals are suing the state for not paying up. I will be taxed for having private insurance. No matter what the final cost of health care will be, I will be paying more than I do now.

[Russ Steele]

Hi Bill,

It was George's post. However, I agree the CBO is being taken out of context. They said, until the bill moves from concept language to law language they can not come up with a final figure. But, the idiots will try to push it through before the final figure is know. What we are seeing now is bait and switch. I am not taking the bait.

[bill tozer]

Thanks Russ for the correction. Sorry George. No disrepect intended.

[Dixon Cruickshank]

Before I make my final call does Gazillion come after Trillion - just wondering

[George Rebane]

Dixon, I think you're about right on that. After a trillion, you just throw on a handful of zeros and call it a gazillion. At that point it doesn't matter any more.