This sounds just like that one time that Liberals hated the CBO before they loved it.

The CBO has to work with exactly what its Congressional masters give it. It is not allowed to question assumptions or give independent opinion. Below is an example cited in today’s Miami Herald:

One big reason the Congressional Budget Office projects that federal budget deficits would drop by $138 billion over the next decade under the Democrats’ pending health care overhaul is that the bill includes a tax on high-end insurance policies. That alone accounts for almost 25 percent of the expected savings.

However, the tax wouldn’t go into effect until 2018, and experts warn that’s a very shaky assumption.

“How can anyone have confidence this will go into effect?” asked Paul Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington research group.

The tax was so unpopular this year that Democrats basically gutted its initial version, then postponed its impact for eight years. Now opponents have eight years to lobby for its full repeal by a future Congress.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/19/1538157/health-bill-may-not-shave-deficits.html#ixzz0ifQ8YFKi

This article in the NYTimes explains how the Democrats made sure the CBO estimates came in “on budget”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/us/19score.html

Let’s all quit playing partisan politics for a second here and practice some good old-fashioned intellectual honesty.

You don’t save money by spending it.

I know that’s a revelation to fans of new math, but what it boils down to is that an expenditure of (an estimated) $940 billion over the next decade is not replenishing the treasury coffers. But if you cut a little here, raise taxes there, defer payments for a few years…voila! On paper, you can show a net gain.

The CBO is a machine that outputs projections based on what has been put in. And it’s rarely been kind to this administration in terms of projections on spending. You can make things look great on a balance sheet that will bear little to no resemblance in real life. Corporations do it all the time – company X suffering what is actually a multi-million (or billion) dollar loss but chalking up everything in the negative column to “one-time charges” and managing to show a profit for the quarter.

It doesn’t take David Walker to tell you that social entitlement programs are hurtling into the red at breakneck speed. While the healthcare charade is going on, a number of Americans are getting shorted on their Medicare payments this month. We can’t afford the promises we make – any more than the automakers could afford the guarantees they made to the unions. When it came down to bankruptcy time, companies like GM were in the neighborhood of a $1500-per-car disadvantage to foreign competitors, due mostly to healthcare and pension guarantees to hundreds of thousands of retirees.

What math makes it look like the government can handle this problem any better? No matter how you slice it, we’re on a one-way track to single-payer, and that’s a tax burden that’s never going away.

The CBO puts out numbers from the info that it gets from either party. The Dems gave the CBO a fixed up set of numbers to get the result which was under $1 trillion for the bill. All the CBO can do is put out the result and everyone else point out they were given trumped up info in the first place.

Most of the outrage regarding the CBO this week was the Dems using preliminary numbers before they issued the finalized report. This is not the same as outrage towards the new CBO numbers.

There is no way the CBO can accurately project the cost of this bill.. and if I have to explain why, you know nothing about what is happening in the Capitol this weekend. I get the terrifying feeling I am close to Media Matters on this post.. shame.

As I pointed out in the Michael Steele thread, back during the Ronald Reagan/Tip O’Neil era, administration officials and Republican spokespeople would often question the independence of the CBO because its director is appointed for a four year term by the ranking members of both houses.

IOW: A love/hate relationship with the CBO isn’t really new, it’s just gotten to the blogosphere.

And the current Director started his term in 2009.
The previous Director left to become head of Obama’s OMB.

“Steve Skojec says:
March 19, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Let’s all quit playing partisan politics for a second here and practice some good old-fashioned intellectual honesty.

You don’t save money by spending it.”

Well, maybe the CBO should do an analysis of the cost of healthcare if we keep the status quo. This is projected cost versus projected cost. The thing is, we’re going to spend money over the next 10 years regardless. The difference is that we will spend less over time. That’s where the savings come from.

These are things you think of when you plan an extended budget. A simple comparison can be made with a family budget. If you stop buying a $3 dollar cup of coffee every day, you would save a thousand dollars a year. Sure, the household numbers and the federal numbers are quite different in size, but the principle remains the same.

The argument that “we’re spending money so we’re not saving money” is disingenuous.

@Stephen-Hogan: Another example might be that right now, DiGiorno pizzas are on sale at my local Krogers for $3.97 and the Walmart regular price is $5.99; The Tyson chicken patties are $2.18 this week, marked-down from $3.99 and Breyers often goes on sale for 50% off or more; etc., etc.

Because I invested in a freezer, I’m better equipped to take advantage of these bargains which means that my initial “spend” will “save” me money in the long run.

I do not hate the CBO report, but I do know that the CBO has historically UNDER estimated all its projections. And, it’s NOT impartial.

-0bamacare will wreck the economy and it is NOTHING but a power grab.