Debunking False Claims About Health Reform, Jobs, and the Deficit

[pinto]

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities fires back. Good, detailed answers to the BS claims of the right. :thumbsup: ~ pinto

Debunking False Claims About Health Reform, Jobs, and the Deficit
By Paul N. Van de Water
January 7, 2011

Proponents of repealing the health reform law (the Affordable Care Act) argue that that the law will increase deficits — contrary to the Congressional Budget Office’s finding that it will reduce deficits by $143 billion over 2010-2019 and by about $1.3 trillion over the following decade <1> — and that it will “kill jobs.” Independent evidence provides no support for either argument.

Moreover, House Republican leaders’ charges that CBO’s cost estimate is “rigged” by biased assumptions CBO was forced to use are demonstrably false. At a time when the nation faces serious long-term fiscal challenges, the notion of congressional leaders rejecting CBO estimates they find politically inconvenient and promoting their own partisan estimates instead has far-reaching, and disturbing, implications.

<snip>

House Republican leaders’ attacks on CBO are unprecedented and inaccurate.

■When CBO estimated<4> this week that the House Republican proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act would increase the deficit by roughly $145 billion over 2012-2019 and by about $230 billion through 2021, House Speaker Boehner described the estimate as merely CBO’s “opinion” and implied that Democrats had forced CBO to produce misleading figures, saying that “CBO can only provide a score based on the assumptions that were given to them.”

■Up until now, congressional leaders of both parties have acknowledged CBO’s professionalism and recognized its critical role as a neutral arbiter in budget matters. They have accepted CBO’s cost estimates, even when those estimates have proved inconvenient for their side. This wholesale attack on, and rejection of, a CBO estimate for a major piece of legislation by the leadership of the House or Senate is unprecedented.

<much more at>

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3366

[Drale]

1. Its also Boners opinion

that he is smart and has the ability to be a speaker of the house.

[pinto]

2. LOL. Yep.

:eyes:

Yet he is Speaker...agggh. Thanks goodness we still have the firewall, Senate and the Presidency.

[Demeter]

3. I'm More Concerned About False Claims on the Left

We cannot control or censor the Right, but we shoot ourselves in the foot with every dropped commitment, false promise, and invalidated campaign pledge.

[Dokkie]

4. I still do

not understand how repealing a program which is funded entirely by tax payers would increase the deficit and did they calculate the 500 BILLION cut to Medicare in the calculation? Also its not like these estimates are ever correct, it always and I mean always cost 2-3 times more than budgeted.

[pinto]

5. A citation for the $500 billion cut to Medicare claim is needed, imho.

Thanks :hi:

[pinto]

6. See - "Health Reform Will Reduce the Deficit"

Health Reform Will Reduce the Deficit
Charges of Budgetary Gimmickry Are Unfounded

Despite an official estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to the contrary, some critics of the new health reform legislation — such as Rep. Paul Ryan and former CBO director and McCain campaign adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin — charge that it will not reduce federal budget deficits because it relies on budgetary gimmicks or games.<1> Careful analysis of these charges shows them to be misleading or inaccurate. They do not withstand scrutiny.

CBO estimates the legislation will reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the ten years from 2010 through 2019. <2> In the following decade, 2020 through 2029, it estimates that the legislation will reduce the deficit by an estimated one-half of 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or about $1.3 trillion. CBO also anticipates that health reform “would probably continue to reduce budget deficits relative to those under current law in subsequent decades, assuming that all of its provisions continue to be fully implemented.”

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3134