Thursday, October 15, 2009

Baucus "Bill" a Fiscal Fantasy Land

From Forbes:
President Barack Obama claims we cannot reduce the long-term deficit without health reform. The Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the Senate Finance bill championed by Max Baucus lends some credence to this theory. The CBO estimates that the bill will reduce the deficit by $81 billion over the next decade, and even more beyond that. But that's assuming Congress will make good on its threat to cut Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Even the CBO does not believe that.
Not only is the bill a fiscal fantasy, it is still, at least as far as I know, a legislative fantasy as well. I haven't seen or heard of any actual legislative language that can be viewed on a paper.

There is no way, on this Earth, that a Congress that wants to be re-elected will ever make substantive cuts to Medicare. So any savings are simply not going to happen and I beleive that the Obama Administration doesn't seriously believe they will be able to make those cuts.

No comments: