No surprise.
The Senate Finance Committee will perpetrate a huge fraud on the US public today. Chairman Max Baucus promises to hold a final vote on his health-care overhaul — most of whose costs he has hidden with budgetary gimmicks.
The widely reported numbers are wrong: This bill would increase the deficit and cost more than $2 trillion over 10 years.
Yes, the headlines on the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost estimate were that the bill could cost $829 billion over 10 years and trim the federal deficit by $81 billion. But those numbers are pure fantasy — as CBO plainly, if gently, indicated.
First off, Baucus relies on some cuts that we know won’t actually get made.
Read more here.