A new study by the Urban Institute reconfirms a vital fact: Medicare’s massive increase in enrollment, largely attributable to retiring baby boomers, is driving its fiscal instability. This is an important finding, because during the health care debate of 2009, advocates of Obamacare insisted that excess health care cost inflation was the more urgent problem contributing to Medicare’s fiscal nightmare. A recent report by Charles Blahous, a public trustee for Medicare, explains: This viewpoint increased in prominence when Peter Orszag, one of [Obamacare’s] leading advocates, was named to head the … More
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President Obama has touted reports from the Congressional Budget Office claiming his health care law would actually decrease the deficit. But due to a bundle of budget gimmicks and other legislation, calculations show that Obamacare actually adds $698 billion to the deficit. This week’s chart outlines each of those budget gimmicks. “This morning a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office concludes that the reform we seek would bring $1.3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next two decades. That makes this legislation the most significant effort to reduce deficits … More
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Some apologists for Obamacare are trying to tout recent analyses from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as confirming once again that the health law will cut projected future budget deficits. But CBO’s recent analyses—including updated projections of the costs of the new entitlement spending in the so-called exchanges and some simulations on employer dumping scenarios—basically say nothing that wasn’t already said when the agency issued its original cost estimates for the law in March 2010. It is certainly true that CBO projected in 2010 and again this month that the … More
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the President’s budget reveals a reckless fiscal plan that shirks the spending cuts in the Budget Control Act and increases spending by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. It confirms that Obama is the first President to preside over four years of deficits in excess of a trillion dollars. Moreover, it deepens the debt by $3.5 trillion. A few details: Higher Total Spending. In the CBO’s analysis, the President’s spending is $1.15 trillion higher between 2013–2022. Roughly half of the … More
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On March 13, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) updated its score of Obamacare, announcing that the program is $48 billion cheaper than in its previous 2011 score. The primary reason for this change is that more individuals will lose their employer-provided coverage than originally anticipated, and the government will collect $99 billion more in taxes and penalties. CBO also finds that there are more uninsured individuals. In short, this new CBO update continues the trend of Obamacare becoming increasingly expensive and decreasingly effective with each new scoring update. In this … More
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The most significant numbers in today’s updated estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) are not the official “baseline” figures. More important are CBO’s “alternative” projections, which make clear once again that too much spending—not too little tax revenue—is the biggest threat to the country’s fiscal and economic health. Among other things, the alternative figures show that: Federal spending will consume record levels of resources as a share of the economy, reaching nearly one-quarter of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022. Without tax increases, tax revenue would still reach its … More
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Environmental activists and liberal politicians are fond of bemoaning the supposedly disproportionate tax benefits that go to the fossil fuel industry compared to its renewable energy competitors. The president specifically has made “ending tax breaks for oil companies” a pillar of his paltry efforts to reduce the federal deficit. But a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) handily debunks the myth that oil companies uniquely or excessively benefit from the tax code. One devastating chart sums up CBO’s key findings: As the chart shows, renewable energy is far … More
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According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), measurements of the budget impact of federal credit do not adequately address the risks involved, and may, in some cases, dramatically understate the costs of those programs. Under the current system, federal accounting practices do not “fully incorporate the cost of market risk,” (emphasis in the original) explained CBO in a new report. Market risk “arises from shifts in macroeconomic conditions, such as productivity and employment, and from changes in expectations about future macroeconomic conditions.” The expected costs of federal loan and … More
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One reason economists sometimes compare themselves to astrologers is that their forecasts are often equally accurate. But when it comes to analyzing government policy, economists have trouble even figuring out what happened in the past. Case in point: The most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report of President Obama’s $831 billion “stimulus” bill—also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The Administration vowed that the bill would “save or create” (a squirrelly measure in itself) 3 million to 4 million jobs. Last week, CBO’s assessment—the 10th quarterly analysis … More
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Though the idea has been thoroughly discredited, the President and Members of Congress are still considering a large, thoroughly bogus “savings” option to help cover their profligate spending: They intend to claim war spending that was never going to be spent as “savings”—and then spend it on something else. It is one of the most embarrassingly transparent gimmicks in town, and it should be shunned permanently. The alleged “savings” come from a reduction in estimated projected spending on U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. But those activities—termed Overseas Contingency Operations … More
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