VIDEO: HEALTHCARE BILL A FISCAL FRAUD

The Democrats, including Obama himself, have been touting this health care bill as one that will create $130 Billion in savings through Medicare cuts and higher taxes. The problem is that the CBO has shown that this does not account for the IOU's that will be sent from the Treasury to the Medicare Trust fund. According the CBO report itself, in order for the claim that a budget surplus would be realized, the money must be counted twice.

Here is the relevant portion of the two-page MEMO, released by the CBO on December 23rd, with the even more relevant excerpts bolded.

The key point is that the savings to the HI trust fund under the PPACA would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs. Trust fund accounting shows the magnitude of the savings within the trust fund, and those savings indeed improve the solvency of that fund; however, that accounting ignores the burden that would be faced by the rest of the government later in redeeming the bonds held by the trust fund. Unified budget accounting shows that the majority of the HI trust fund savings would be used to pay for other spending under the PPACA and would not enhance the ability of the government to redeem the bonds credited to the trust fund to pay for future Medicare benefits. To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government’s fiscal position.

Now for the Video. Republican senators Jeff Sessions (AL), John Kyl (AZ), and Judd Gregg (NH) were visibly disturbed by the blatant attempt by the Democrats to lie in order to get this monstrosity passed, with Sessions actually making the accusation that if this was corporate America, someone would be going to Jail. The video is a little lengthy but very much worth watching.



Unfortunately, the CBO memo didn't come out until Wednesday, the 23rd. Thanks to Nebraska senator Ben Nelson's sellout, the vote to end cloture took place two days earlier at 1am so this CBO report was basically rendered inconsequential in terms of the Senate version of the bill passing.

Phillip Klein has been writing about this as well. In reference to the Democrats continuing to claim budget savings, Klein ended one ARTICLE this way:

Similar comments have been echoed by Democrats during the several weeks that the Senate has been debating health care -- it would have been nice to have the CBO memo back when it could have actually made a difference.

For some reason, I can't help wondering if that one-on-one meeting between Obama and CBO Director Doug Elmendorf back in July had anything to do with the delay between the Democrats getting 60 votes and the CBO reporting the truth. Elmendorf gets to go on record as having reported the truth about the costs and the bill still gets rammed through.

Remember THIS? When you watch this video, fast forward to the three-minute mark to watch the part about Elmendorf and the CBO.

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h/t to SAY ANYTHING

MOVING THE CBO GOALPOSTS AND LEARNING FROM CLINTONS

Does a Congressional Budged Office (CBO) memo show that they've been directed by democrats to score the healthcare bill differently than they scored the healthcare plan put forth by the Clinton administration in 1994? The CATO institute's Michael Cannon has some compelling evidence that it does.

First, a little history. Like both the House and Senate bills, the Clinton health plan would have mandated that individuals and employers purchase private insurance. In its 1994 score of the Clinton plan, Bob Reischauer’s CBO included those mandated “private” payments in the federal budget –- i.e., as federal revenues and federal expenditures.

And yet, none of the CBO scores of this year’s bills include the costs of similar individual/employer mandates as federal revenues or federal spending.

My read of the CBO’s score of the Clinton health plan is that the private-sector mandates accounted for around 60 percent of the Clinton health plan’s total cost, the remainder being (traditional) government spending. So how is it that the CBO made the full cost of the Clinton health plan apparent to the public in 1994, but may now be revealing only 40 percent of the cost of the Obama health plan?

Is it me or does there seem to be some interesting parallels between climategate and Obamacare? This memo would seem to indicate the manipulation of data to arrive at a desired outcome in pursuit of a larger agenda. In true-to-Alinsky fashion, it would be a case of ends-justify-the-means tactics.

In addition to the CBO scoring apparently omitting some critically important data, the reason according to Cannon - and bolstered by the released memo is that the Obama administration knows Clintonian history relative to healthcare.

Quoting Cannon:

The Medical Loss Ratios memo is the smoking gun. It shows that indeed, Democrats have been submitting proposals to the CBO behind closed doors and tailoring their private-sector mandates to avoid having those costs appear in the federal budget.

Check out the MEMO for yourself.

Read it ALL

h/t to AS

VIDEO: White House Beginning to WRITHE in Desperation

Hot Air began reporting on this yesterday and Real Clear Politics has the video of the Fox News Alert from this morning. In any case, it appears that Obama's preference to outsource strong-arm tactics to his Community Organisms is giving way to the, "If you want to get something done right, you have to do it yourself" adage.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been a thorn in the side of Obama's reckless economic policies for a while now but they apparently crossed the line last week when CBO Chief Doug Elmendorf gave a resounding THUMBS DOWN to the Obama Health Care debacle.

In true Chicago-Way style, Obama allegedly attempted to bully Mr. Elmendorf into coming around to see "reason" by summoning him to the White House for some canoli. Fox News picked up the story. Check out the Video here. Doesn't this remind you of the Inspectors General scandals? Like the IG's, the CBO chief is SUPPOSED to report to Congress. Like the AmeriCorps IG Gerald Walpin, Obama appears to have thumbed his nose at the law.

Lastly, here are the applicable Alinsky rules Obama likely referred to in deciding to summon Elmendorf:

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

h/t to Hot Air for linking to the Fox News story