Let Me Show You My Shiny New Calculator..

The Democrats screeched recently that repealing Obamacare will cost over $230 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The problem--the CBO! Very simply (as I promised I would be when I post), the CBO is nothing more than a human government calculator. They are given a set of numbers from legislators and told to 'score' the document. AT NO POINT is the C.B.O. allowed to question the legislators' assumptions. "The budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out". Douglas Holtz-Eakin,  director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005.

Remember, President Obama promised he would not enact a health care act that increased the deficit in the 2010-2020 time span. Let's take a look of the CBO math shell game the Democrats created so you can better discern whether you believe repeal will "cost" $230 billion:

1) Just to implement Obamacare, the cost was estimated to be $115 billion dollars. Why so high?--159 new agencies have to be created to start up this plan--yes, that was 159 new, sparkling, well-managed, hyper-efficient Federal agencies. The $115 billion was omitted in the C.B.O. document. Yes, imagine you starting up a company and your startup costs are simply, uhhh, uhhh, irrelevant?

2) They would begin taxation in 2010, but the majority of benefits would not begin until 2014. The Democrats quite impressively deceived you by collecting money for 10 years, but offering benefits for 6 years. Can you imagine any public company selling that bill of goods to their stockholders?

3) The biggy ! The legislation proposed to trim $463 billion from Medicare spending and use it to finance insurance subsidies. Although the legislators had no specific reforms in how they were going to stop the red ink monster known as Medicare, they just asked to be trusted to make Medicare efficient and fraud-free. Bwahahaha- "If we can dream it, they will believe it", said the trusted Democrat.

4) What is the "Doc Fix"? A complex Medicare reimbursement formula (I promised not to be complex so no elaboration). Bottom line, in 2010 alone, that amount was $15 billion. Experts say for next decade $200 billion is a reasonable estimate. Well, lo and behold, the legislation omitted the Doc Fix to the CBO. See the hypocrisy--we can pretend we are going to save you $463 billion (see section #3) and we will score that--but when we have hard, historical numbers of $200 billion, let's not use them. Pathetic.

5) "OK guys, we are still short $19 billion to make this deficit neutral, what do we do?". Well, we will take over financing school loans, which will save us $19 billion, and, wolahh, solved. Yes, they included their takeover of federal school loans into Obamacare and applied it toward their goal of cost savings. Yes, Americans, school loans and health care are now the same thing!

So, quick 6th grade synopsis to make Obamacare cost neutral:

• $115 billion to start the program but omit those numbers from CBO scoring
• Collect money for 10 years, pay benefits 6 years
• Promise to trim $463 billion from Medicaire without any plan, accountability or consequence if numbers are not met
• Spend over $200 billion for Medicaire physicans, but omit those numbers from scoring because Medicaire is, what, pet care?
• Add the school loan savings to the health care act because, after all, schools have nurses, or something.

(If you want to see a snapshot of the tax tidal wave that will drown us with the mandate of Obamacare, you can go here )...

PS: Although I prepped this post almost 2 weeks ago, lo and behold, what appears today in the Wall Street Journal--"It's all about budget gimmicks, deceptive accounting, and implausible assumptions used to create the false impression of fiscal discipline". Who said that--former C.B.O. director. Link is here.

So there you go, when you hear "CBO", from any politician, it is simply garbage in, garbage out. If you believe that a new health-care entitlement saves us money, head out to the end of the rainbow and pick up your pot of gold....

/S/ dave