Wednesday, October 7, 2009

CBO says Senate Health Bill Would Reduce Federal Deficit

Good news! We will have to wait and see if this will swing any votes.
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2 comments:

Evan said...

Republicans are very serious about controlling government spending.

So obviously they'll all vote against this bill.

October 7, 2009 at 5:16 PM
Lachlan said...

I'm all for pay-go style spending, so I'm glad that the committee was able to come up with sufficient cuts to reduce the federal deficit through the bill.

I'm also glad that we would finally start slashing Medicare, which is doomed to bankruptcy, and replacing it with other, hopefully more financially viable health care options.

That said, the fact that it took hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts to eliminate the deficit-spiking nature of the bill tells me that nothing in the health care program the bill creates will really be deficit neutral. We could, after all, make the Iraq war deficit neutral if we simply slashed $100 billion out of the other areas of the defense budget.

That wouldn't make the Iraq war deficit neutral, but it would make the bill authorizing the war (or rather the defense appropriations for it) deficit neutral. By slashing other areas of the budget, congressional leaders have abdicated in their responsibility to ensure the fiscal soundness of the program, and have opted instead to shift the burden on the budget from one program (Medicare) to another (whatever new health care system emerges).

The savings generated by the new program are not expected to account for additions in federal spending. Rather, in order to reduce the deficit, we simply reduce spending in other areas. So while the bill that authorizes the program may reduce the federal deficit, the program itself will not.

October 8, 2009 at 10:49 AM

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