If the puzzle pieces don’t fit together, just break off a piece and make them fit:
What’s a big obstacle to getting a health care overhaul bill out of the Senate? The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), according to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.
The Montana Democrat has repeatedly said he’s having trouble getting congressional actuaries to score savings in the health proposals he’s shown them—partly because many are new ideas without economic data to help generate a score, and in other cases because they are ideas that almost everybody believes will eventually lower spending. Apparently, the CBO’s strict scoring rules won’t allow for a savings-friendly interpretation.
“The slight challenge we have is getting numbers and estimates from CBO,” Baucus said. Scoring savings is a necessity for offsetting a health bill’s costs, and Baucus says he is continuing to push the CBO to show savings where it can.
“Otherwise, health care reform is in jeopardy,” he said at a hearing today.
In other words, we have a plan which we know will cost a vast amount of money and we have claims that un-tested actions will reduce costs…and the Democrats pushing the new spending want the un-tried stuff included in the mix not because they have faith in it, but because they don’t want to present another several trillion dollar bill to the American taxpayer…especially after Americans have become increasingly dismayed over the last massive, new spending program (ie, TARP).
I think we can rely upon it that whatever comes out of Congress and the White House will not be the whole truth. They simply will not tell us exactly what is going on because they know full well that full disclosure means massive public opposition. So much for “hope and change” – its now “hide and confuse”.
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