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Democrats have so thoroughly gamed the budget process and the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring rules that the official cost estimates of the Obama health plan reveal but a sliver of the legislation’s full cost. The Obama plan would vastly increase the size and scope of the federal government, and increase our already record federal deficit. To hear Democrats tell it, the CBO projects the legislation would cost a mere $940 billion over the next 10 years. The CBO said no such thing: that figure pertains only to provisions aimed at expanding health insurance. Other spending provisions bring the cost to...

House Democrats will not post a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the revised healthcare bill tonight, according toSpeaker Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office. Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami told reporters gathered outside the Speaker's office, that a a CBO score would not be forthcoming."Go home," Elshami said, avoiding questions of the implication not having the scores online means to the timing of a final vote. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) admitted that if the scores are posted on Thursday, and Democrats honor the 72-hour rule, then the vote would "most likely happen on Sunday, if that scenario plays out."

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 CBO Report Was Pre-Ordained to Show the Stimulus Succeeded    [Brian Riedl] The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has produced a new report estimating that the $862 billion stimulus has thus far saved or created 1.5 million jobs. Yet the CBO’s calculations are not based on actually observing the economy’s recent performance. Rather, they used an economic model that was programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs — thus guaranteeing their result. Logicians call this the begging-the-question fallacy. Mathematicians call it assuming what you are trying to prove. The CBO model started by automatically...

The president's plan to freeze non-military discretionary spending isn't good. The new projections for this year's economy from the CBO are much worse. They project a $1.3 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2010, the second largest as a share of GDP since WWII. They project unemployment over 10 percent until mid-year, and still in the high 9s when the spending freeze bites. In short, we're trapped.

<p>Budget chief contradicts Obama on Medicare costs Sep 22 05:49 PM US/Eastern By ERICA WERNER Associated Press Writer Comments (1) Email to a friend Share on Facebook Tweet this Bookmark and Share WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress' chief budget officer is contradicting President Barack Obama's oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn't see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.</p>

Budget chief contradicts Obama on Medicare costs Sep 22 05:49 PM US/Eastern By ERICA WERNER Associated Press Writer Comments (1) Email to a friend Share on Facebook Tweet this Bookmark and Share WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress' chief budget officer is contradicting President Barack Obama's oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn't see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul. The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators Tuesday that seniors in Medicare's managed care plans would see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee. The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans...

...arlier this month the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office delivered its latest revenue-raising options for Senate and House consideration as they write this fall's tax and budget legislation. Tucked away in the report are several incendiary plans that could — if adopted — cost homeowners billions of dollars. Though not formal legislative proposals, the CBO's options represent a handy fiscal menu for legislators to pick and choose from to reduce the deficit — now at unprecedented levels — or to pay for new programs they might want to advance. Tops on the CBO's hit list for housing: Slash deductions for homeowner...

The narrative currently being written by the new left posits that opposition to their attempts to reform health care is fueled by political impotence, crackpot extremism and racism. Alas, elected officials demonstrating contempt for the people they represent has sadly become the rule rather than the exception. Calling the American people Nazis and fools may make a more compelling story than the truth, but it will not alter the fact that Americans simply do not want the expensive, top-heavy government healthcare boondoggle currently being stuffed down their throats. The new left is always convinced they are the smartest folks in...

White House 'Reality Check’ Web Site Claims Health Care Reform ‘Would Not Add One Penny to Deficit’ Despite CBO Reports to Contrary CNSNews.com) – A new Web site launched Monday by the Obama administration to rebut alleged disinformation about the administration's efforts to reform the health care system claims that reform “would not add one penny to the deficit"--despite the fact that the two health care reform bills that have been analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office are predicted by the CBO to increase the national debt by $239 billion and $1.042 trillion respectively. The administration, meanwhile, has not produced...

Analysis: Some health care numbers don't tally By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 03 WASHINGTON – Some of President Barack Obama's health care numbers don't seem to add up. And that's complicating his efforts to pass his top domestic priority. Obama could be falling into the same trap that snagged George W. Bush when he was pushing private accounts for Social Security as part of his "ownership society" in 2005. Bush's claims that the proposal would help shore up Social Security's long-term finances were hard to document mathematically and wound up feeding greater public skepticism. Obama claims...

The CBO released a new analysis of the House version of ObamaCare yesterday, after getting blasted by White House budget director Peter Orszag for “exaggerating” the costs associated with the proposal. Douglas Elmendorf tells Rep. Dave Camp (R), the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, that the changes proposed by the White House will have little impact on their cost analysis, and that in fact the news gets worse in the second decade after the first runs up a $239 billion deficit:

For the second time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has dealt a blow to Obamacare. Their analysis of a White House/Congressional proposal to give an independent panel the power to keep Medicare spending in check, reported the panel idea would save a measly $2 billion over 10 years. Its not often one can call $2 billion measly, however the term is appropriate when its an offset to help pay for a $1-1.6 trillion Obamacare bill. In mid-July CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes...

For the second time this month, congressional budget analysts have dealt a blow to the Democrat's health reform efforts, this time by saying a plan touted by the White House as crucial to paying for the bill would actually save almost no money over 10 years. A key House chairman and moderate House Democrats on Tuesday agreed to a White House-backed proposal that would give an outside panel the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs. White House budget director Peter Orszag declared the plan "probably the most important piece that can be added" to the House's health...

The Washington Post recently ran a story quoting Democrats as bragging that President Obama has deliberately patterned his legislative strategy after LBJ’s, circa 1965.This may explain the treatment of Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the supposedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office who last week told Congress that you can’t “save” money on health care by having government insure everyone. For that bit of truth-telling, he was first excoriated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Then he was summoned, er, invited to the White House for an extraordinary and inappropriate meeting Monday with President Obama and a phalanx of economic and health-care...

In January, the Congressional Budget Office reported that healthcare legislation drafted by the Senate would add $1 trillion to the federal deficit and only reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 16 million. Then in July, the CBO reported that healthcare legislation drafted by the House would add $239 billion to the federal deficit and actually increase healthcare costs. Now, Barack Obama wants a meeting with the director of the Congressional Budget Office. After these CBO numbers .. which some Democrats have described as "devastating" .. it's time to pull out the big guns. Get this guy a meeting with...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior administration official says billions of dollars to raise fees for doctors treating Medicare patients are not covered by President Barack Obama's pledge to pay for health care legislation. Budget Director Peter Orszag said Tuesday that's because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to prevent a cut of more than 20 percent in doctor fees. The Congressional Budget Office said last Friday the higher payments cost $245 billion over 10 years. It said including the money in the overall bill would result in deficits totaling $239 billion. On Friday, a few hours earlier,...

Barack Obama disclosed an unusual meeting with the CBO, presumably its director Doug Elmendorf, in his Today Show appearance this morning with Meredith Viera. The relevant clip comes at the three-minute mark, where Viera challenges Obama on the CBO scoring of the health-care reform bills: OBAMA: And so, what we’ve got to do, is to bend the cost curve over the long term. And we’ve put forward a whole series of proposals to do that, and the Congressional Budget Office and every health care expert have looked at many of our proposals, and they’ve said, “You know, this has a...

The Senate can pass legislation overhauling the U.S. health-care system by August with some Republican support even with the “wacky” cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, Senator Charles Schumer said.

This double dose of doom has made absolutely no impact on Capitol Hill. Three House committees seem ready to report out a $1.5 trillion health care reform measure while the Senate Finance Committee appears close to a bipartisan deal on how to fund it — this, despite the fact that the CBO chief has told them there is no way to pay for it. It is like being in a bad dream where there’s a fire in a room where a dinner party is being held and you’re the only one who notices. Everyone else is still playing cards, eating,...

Congressional Budget Office Director’s Blog -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- « Intergovernmental Mandates in Federal LegislationThe Long-Term Budget Outlook Today I had the opportunity to testify before the Senate Budget Committee about CBO’s most recent analysis of the long-term budget outlook. Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just...

So much for the idea that the new healthcare proposal -- which we don't think is anywhere close to getting at the root of the program -- will allow us to save money. The non-partisan CBO has slammed the bill, saying it will increase costs and weaken the economy. Ouch! This is actually really surprising, since just a few days ago there were reports about how the CBO was set to give Pelosicare a really good score. Jonathan Cohn of TNR had this "Exclusive" just three days ago: A lot of conservative Democrats, not to mention Republicans, express two big...

Over the past few weeks the Democrats have re-energized their quest to ram a healthcare bill down the throats of the American People before their summer break in August. Why the rush? The party knows that members of the lower house will face severe opposition to the program when they return home to their districts, and God-forbid the Obama agenda be slowed down just because it goes against the will of the people. Much of the concern about Obamacare is the effect the bill will have on the economy, the increase in federal bureaucracy and deficit and the corresponding leap...

Instead of saving the federal government from fiscal catastrophe, the health reform measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would worsen an already bleak budget outlook, increasing deficit projections and driving the nation more deeply into debt, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this morning. Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a signficant amount." "On the contrary," Elmendorf said,...

Instead of saving the federal government from fiscal catastrophe, the health reform measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would worsen an already bleak budget outlook, increasing deficit projections and driving the nation more deeply into debt, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this morning.

Here's a blow to President Obama and Democrats pressing health care reform. One of the main arguments made by the President and others for investing in health reform now is that it will save the federal government money in the long run by containing costs. Turns out that may not be the case, according to Doug Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Answering questions from Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota at a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee today, Elmendorf said CBO does not see health care cost savings in either of the partisan Democratic bills currently...

Remember last week when the media touted a new cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office suggesting that Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had found a magic want enabling them to cover 97 percent of the uninsured for $600 billion? Well, we now know that the cost is more like $1.1 trillion, and likely higher. As I cautioned when the CBO numbers came out last week, the $600 billion estimate did not include the price of massively expanding Medicaid, a costly provision of all of the various Democratic health care proposals. But now the CBO...

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. CBO...said the House and Senate bills will...[lead] to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing. (emphasis added)

This past Monday, while selling his health care plan President Barack Obama told the American Medical Association: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” The Congressional Budget Office disagrees. Their preliminary analysis of an incomplete Democratic health plan estimated that 10 million people would have to seek new insurance because their...

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that the latest cost estimates for Democrats' health care overhaul amount to a "death blow" to calls for a government-run plan. The influential South Carolina Republican was responding to estimates this past week from the Congressional Budget Office, which tagged one plan at $1.5 trillion over 10 years and another at $1 trillion over 10 years. Though many experts anticipated a comprehensive health care overhaul would cost about $1 trillion, the CBO predicted that the latter plan would only cover 16 million uninsured -- or about one-third of those who currently lack coverage. Graham said...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy will likely start growing again in the second half of this year but unemployment will likely keep rising through 2010 to peak over 10 percent, the Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday. "The growth in output later this year and next year is likely to be sufficiently weak that the unemployment rate will probably continue to rise into the second half of next year and peak above 10 percent," CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said in prepared testimony to the U.S. House Budget Committee. It will likely take several years for the unemployment rate to...

President Obama may be determined to use the current economic crisis as an excuse for "Obamanomics" to transform the United States into the world's largest socialist state. Data emerging from the Congressional Budget Office and various international agencies, including the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or OECD, indicate the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion federal budget will dramatically increase government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP, on a scale that rivals even the European Union social welfare states of France, Great Britain and Germany.

With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat to America's economic future. That threat is not the severe recession, tough as that is for the families and businesses struggling to make ends meet. In time, the recession will end, and last week's stock market performance hinted that we may not have to wait years for the recovery to begin. The real threat is the monstrous debt resulting from the slump in revenue and the staggering sums being committed by Washington to rescuing embattled...

The Congressional Budget Office released a report March 20 that stated President Barack Obama’s budget would result in annual deficits averaging more than $900 billion for the next 10 years. The CBO reported the new official current-law baseline produces a 10-year deficit of $4.4 trillion, which is about $1.3 trillion worse than the January forecast (due to a newly enacted legislation – $1.3 trillion for the stimulus package – and a deteriorating revenue base – a loss of $1.3 trillion). More importantly, the national debt officially surpassed the $11 trillion mark. Former President George W. Bush was no free market...

House and Senate Democratic leaders are looking to pass the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion federal budget for 2010 by the end of next week, but the lawmakers under them should take into account the shocking deficit impact and fight to reign in the proposal. We're not holding our breath that they will do so, despite the immense deficit predictions announced Friday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO has projected the initiatives proposed in President Obama's budget would increase the deficit to over $1.8 trillion this year. That is 13.1 percent of GDP and significantly more than the already...

The huge economic stimulus package that President Obama signed into law Tuesday will result in “lower wages” for American workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO analysis, dated Feb. 11 and sent to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), says the $787-billion plan will increase employment in the short-term, but will run up deficit spending which will “crowd out” private investment in the economy in the long-term. The analysis concludes that the stimulus will put downward pressure on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and wages after 2014. (The Gross Domestic Product is the total value of all goods and services...

CBO: TARP Executive-Pay Limits Would Cost Treasury $10.9 Billion Over 10 Yrs WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Caps on compensation paid to executives at firms receiving taxpayer money under the financial rescue program added to the Senate economic stimulus bill would cost the Treasury around $10.9 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. One cap, introduced last week as an amendment to the stimulus bill by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., would cost the federal government nearly $14 billion in lost income-tax revenues by 2019, the nonpartisan CBO said. The cost to the taxpayer would be partially offset by...

Obama's stimulus will stimulate illegal immigration According to the CBO, the stimulus bill will actually hurt the economy in the long run. However, there is the possibility it will stimulate illegal immigration. In addition to providing up to 300 thousand construction jobs for illegal aliens, the bill will bail out irresponsible states like California. This will allow them to avoid dealing with one of the primary reasons they have a budget deficit. That reason is the extensive and expensive social net they have extended to illegal immigrants. When you couple this stimulus bill with the collapsing state of the Mexican...

The Congressional Budget Office predicted that the current economic recession will end in the second half of 2009 without the trillion dollar stimulus. From The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009 to 2019 (pdf): CBO anticipates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, will last until the second half of 2009, making it the longest recession since World War II. (The longest such recessions otherwise, the 1973–1974 and 1981–1982 recessions, both lasted 16 months. If the current recession were to continue beyond midyear, it would last at least 19 months.) It could also be the deepest recession...

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing. CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to...

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing. CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to...

RONALD REAGAN loved to tell the story of the unfailingly cheerful little boy who wakes up on Christmas morning to find, instead of presents, an immense pile of manure. Undaunted, he grabs a shovel and starts digging. "With all this manure," he says excitedly, "there must be a pony in here someplace!" Is there a pony somewhere in the $825 billion "stimulus" plan that Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to bring to a vote this week? The Congressional Budget Office started digging into this immense pile of, uh, deficit spending, and what it found would discourage even a...

There was a lukewarm and somewhat nerdy scandal towards the end of last week about a report on the stimulus bill, supposedly issued by the Congressional Budget Office, that turned out not to exist. The phantom report, which found that much of the bill would not be spent until after fiscal year 2010, was cited by David Brooks, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and other conservative outlets as evidence that stimulus package wasn't going to be particularly timely. But then it became clear that the report was based only on a partial analysis of the spending bill and may...

According to Bloomberg, the CBO has made a very troubling analysis of the stimulus package that Obama and the Democratic Congress are circulating. The government wouldn’t be able to spend at least one-fourth of a proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan until after 2010, according to a new report that suggests it may take longer than expected to boost the economy.

<p>Transition: There could be many reasons for the market's four-session, 20% run-up. But one of the them, we suspect, is a succession of surprisingly nonthreatening appointments by Barack Obama to his leadership team.</p> <p>Given Obama's public pronouncements and past associations, Americans had every right to worry that his election would signal a great lurch leftward in Washington. And once Congress reconvenes, that may yet happen.</p>

Remember during the campaign how this whole economic mess, according to the Obama camp, was the fault of the Bush administration and the past 8 years? They had all those excellent slogans… we can’t afford four more years of the same… remember? I don’t want to say that a lot of people bought that crap, but anytime you tried to talk about actual economic history and how this mess evolved, most people glazed over and muttered “past 8 years… more of same… must change.” Well, just this Sunday while enjoying a piping hot cup of joe and a danish, I...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday tapped a Washington insider and protege of Robert Rubin as his budget chief and said he had a mandate to change the direction of the country."We had a decisive win...and so I don't think there is any question we have a mandate to move the country in a new direction," Obama said at a press conference. Obama tapped Peter Orszag, a Democrat who has headed the Congressional Budget Office for the last two years, to head the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget. Obama said his first priority would be...

Peter Orszag, the current director of the Congressional Budget Office, smiles as he listens to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama speak about choosing Orszag as his choice for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during a news conference in Chicago November 25, 2008.

CHICAGO – The economy growing weaker, President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday that recovery efforts will trump deficit concerns when he takes office in January. Yet he pledged a "page-by-page, line-by-line" budget review to root out unneeded spending. The president-elect set no goals for reducing the federal deficit — now in record territory and headed ever higher — an obvious contrast to Monday's announcement that he hopes to create a recession-busting 2.5 million jobs by 2010. He spoke as he appointed Peter Orszag, currently head of the Congressional Budget Office, to be his own budget director. Obama's comments came at his...