Tag Archives: Billion

News

CBO raises Obamacare cost projections to over 1 trillion dollars

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Story here from center-left Politico.com. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Congressional Budget Office estimates released Tuesday predict the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections.

The additional spending — if approved over the years by Congress — would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to over $1 trillion.

[…]The CBO released the estimates in response to a request from California Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. A spokeswoman for Lewis said the inquiry was filed before the House voted on the bill.

“[L]arge sums of discretionary spending in both the House and Senate versions of the health care reform bills have not yet been included in estimates by the CBO, rendering it impossible to make informed decisions regarding the outcome of this legislation,” Lewis wrote in a February letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to postpone votes until the discretionary spending analysis was complete.

Isn’t that why so many people people voted for Obama? So that he could make us more like Greece?

News

Democrats propose 23 billion bailout for teacher unions

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Story here from the leftist Washington Post. (H/T Ace of Spades via ECM)

Excerpt:

As public schools nationwide face larger class sizes and cuts in programs, the Senate’s leading Democrat on education issues proposed a $23 billion bailout Wednesday to help avert layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers and other school personnel in the coming academic year.

[…]Education Secretary Arne Duncan estimated that school layoffs could total from 100,000 to 300,000 unless Congress acts.

“It is brutal out there, really scary,” Duncan told reporters on Capitol Hill. “This is a real emergency. What we’re trying to avert is an education catastrophe.”

Duncan stopped just short of endorsing Harkin’s bill. But he said efforts to improve schools will suffer if class sizes rise, summer school is cut and other programs are jettisoned.

Harkin, chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s panel on education and of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said time is running out because states are starting to issue layoff notices. “We must act soon,” he said. “This is not something we can fix in August. We have to fix it now.”

[…]Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said he worried about where the government would find $23 billion for a bailout in a time of growing federal budget deficits. “I wonder from whose schoolchildren we are going to borrow this money, because we have a looming debt crisis in this country and we’ll need to debate this,” he said. “We all want to help our children and our schools, but that is a deep concern.”

A fitting follow-up to today’s earlier education policy post. This is why you don’t put silver spoon liberals in charge of the country – they just keep spending and spending to bail out their greedy special interest groups.

News

Obama’s spending freeze saves 250 billion out of 43 trillion in spending over 10 years

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Article from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The latest idea for reining in the federal government’s runaway spending is to “freeze” nondefense discretionary outlays for three years. That may sound good, but it’s just another gimmick.

We try not to be too cynical about politics, but the White House’s proposed freeze will do nothing to address America’s budget problems.

Last year alone, the U.S. deficit hit $1.4 trillion on record spending of $3.7 trillion. The freeze will apply only to $447 billion in spending — just 12% of the total. Next year, if the freeze goes into effect, it will save just $15 billion — and $250 billion over 10 years.

Compared with the $9 trillion in new debt and $43 trillion in spending expected over the next decade, it’s a pittance — not even a down payment on our gaping shortfalls.

[…]According to the CBO, the $250 billion in savings amounts to a negligible 0.5% of the $43 trillion in spending over the next decade. But it will no doubt be put to good political use, as congressional Democrats suddenly style themselves as fiscal conservatives during the 2010 campaign for passing a meaningless freeze.

Let me be clear. Obama never has been a fiscal conservative, and he isn’t going to start to be one now. It’s just words on a teleprompter that he reads so that you stop calling your representatives.