Tag Archives: CBO

Michele Bachmann and Paul Ryan on the Wisconsin teacher union pensions

First, Megyn Kelly explains the Wisconsin union crisis.

Michele Bachmann interviewed by Megyn Kelly:

Paul Ryan interviewed by Greta Van Susteren.

Paul Ryan also talks about Obama’s latest budget.

Ladies and gentlemen, the grown-up party.

UPDATE: Here’s a story for those who are Youtube-impaired.

Excerpt:

Two-thirds of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools cannot read proficiently according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”

The test also showed that the reading abilities of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders had not improved at all between 1998 and 2009 despite a significant inflation-adjusted increase in the amount of money Wisconsin public schools spent per pupil each year.

This is an issue we can win on.

CBO says that Obamacare will reduce employment by 800,000 workers

The CBO director was being questioned by Republican Congressman John Campbell when he let something interesting come out about Obamacare.

Here’s the video:

And the transcript: (H/T The Weekly Standard)

Chairman [Paul] Ryan: “[I]t’s been argued…that the new health care law will create jobs and increase labor force participation. But if I recall from your analysis, it was quite the opposite. Is that not the case?”

Director [Douglas] Elmendorf : “Yes.”…

[…]

Rep. [John] Campbell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, we’ll — and Dr. Elmendorf — and we’ll continue this conversation right now. First on health care, before I get to — before I get to broader issues, you just mentioned that you believe — or that in your estimate, that the health care law would reduce the labor used in the economy by about 1/2 of 1 percent, given that, I believe you say, there’s 160 million full-time people working in ’20-’21.  That means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in ’20-’21. Is that correct?

Director Elmendorf: Yes. The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that…employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade.  Half a percent of that is 800,000.

I noticed that the Blog Prof found of video of Nancy Pelosi promising that Obamacare would CREATE 400,000 jobs. Ooops.

I am sure that some of the 800,000 people who will be losing their jobs because of Obama’s socialist health care plan voted for Obama in 2008. What were those people thinking?

Does the CBO think that repealing Obamacare will help or hurt the deficit?

Gateway Pundit reports that the Democrats have been telling everyone that repealing Obamacare will make the budget deficit worse.

The left-wing Washington Post says:

Rescinding the federal law to overhaul the health-care system, the first objective of House Republicans who ascended to power this week, would ratchet up the federal deficit by about $230 billion over the next decade and leave 32 million more Americans uninsured, according to congressional budget analysts.

The rough estimate by the Congressional Budget Office also predicts that most Americans would pay more for private health insurance if the law were repealed.

The headline of this left-wing Washington Post news article is “CBO says health care repeal would deepen deficit”.

The left-wing New York Times says:

The nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in Congress said on Thursday that the Republican plan to repeal President Obama’s health care law would add $230 billion to federal budget deficits over the next decade, intensifying the first legislative fight of the new session and highlighting the challenge Republicans face in pursuing their agenda.

The budget office estimated that the health care law, including education provisions, would reduce deficits over 10 years by $143 billion. Tax increases and cuts in projected Medicare spending would more than offset the cost of extending health insurance to millions of Americans. The budget office projected that the law would result in even bigger savings beyond 2019.

The headlines of this left-wing New York Times news article is “Republicans Are Given a Price Tag for Health Law Repeal, but Reject It”.

Wow, that sounds bad.

But is it true? Is it possible that the government can cover MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and have health care costs GO DOWN?

Well, look at the latest CBO numbers, straight from the CBO mailing list.

Excerpt:

CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have not yet developed a detailed estimate of the budgetary impact of H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, which would repeal the major health care legislation enacted in March 2010. Yesterday, we released a preliminary analysis of that legislation indicating that, over the 2012-2021 period, the effect of enacting H.R. 2 on the federal budget as a result of changes in direct spending and revenues is likely to be an increase in deficits in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of forthcoming technical and economic changes to CBO’s and JCT’s projections for that period.

We have been asked to provide the revenue and direct spending components of that total.  Extrapolating the estimated budgetary effects of the original health care legislation and accounting for the effects of subsequent legislation, CBO anticipates that enacting H.R. 2 would probably yield, for the 2012-2021 period, a reduction in revenues in the neighborhood of $770 billion and a reduction in outlays in the vicinity of $540 billion, plus or minus the effects of forthcoming technical and economic changes to CBO’s and JCT’s projections.

Ah. So repealing Obama care would CUT SPENDING by 540 BILLION DOLLARS. And the only way to say that Obamacare can produce a surplus is by RAISING TAXES BY 770 BILLION DOLLARS.

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