Ben Bernanke

Congress Ignores Obvious Policy Solution To Major Economic Threat

Brian Beutler | May 24, 2012, 5:12AM

If Congress passed legislation to fund the federal government for a year, then scattered to the four winds, the United States would find itself in recession sometime in 2013.

That's what the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concluded in a Tuesday report, meant to alert elected officials to the dangers of allowing the country to fall off the "fiscal cliff." That's shorthand for allowing all of the Bush tax cuts and the payroll tax holiday, extended unemployment benefits, and Medicare physician reimbursement rates to expire; and to allow spending on domestic and defense programs to be cut indiscriminately. All of these things will happen automatically at the beginning of the year if Congress does nothing.

Budget deficits would fall dramatically, but at the expense of hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs at a time when the country's current economic maladies are just beginning to heal. By contrast, protecting the recovery likely means large budget deficits will persist for quite some time.

If there were an obvious way around this conundrum you'd think Congress would've taken it. In reality, according to policy experts and economists of a wide range of ideological leanings there is an obvious way around this conundrum -- and yet Congress isn't taking it.

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Mitt Romney

Romney Retreats From 'Unrealistic' Four Percent Unemployment Benchmark

Brian Beutler | May 23, 2012, 2:34PM

Mitt Romney

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has come a long way from insisting "anything over four percent [unemployment] is nothing to celebrate."

That benchmark, which he set earlier in May, drew criticism from economists of every political persuasion, including GOP loyalists.

On Tuesday, he set a new goal for himself -- one that won't create a hoped-for contrast with President Obama.

"I can tell you that over a period of 4 years, by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, or perhaps a little lower," Romney said, "depends in part upon the rate of growth of the globe as well as what we're seeing here in the United States, but we get the rate down quite substantially."

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John Boehner

CBO: Coming Fiscal Cliff Will Devastate The Economy (CHART)

Brian Beutler | May 23, 2012, 6:22AM

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

A giant austerity bomb is timed to go off at the beginning of next year, and the threat of significantly higher taxes and lower spending has Republicans running around the Capitol sounding more like John Maynard Keynes than John Boehner.

Automatic, across-the-board reductions to domestic and defense spending, combined with the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts, will dramatically consolidate the budget in the next calendar year, if Congress does nothing. And despite bemoaning deficits throughout the Obama years, the GOP's suddenly come around to the view that cutting government spending is a job killer.

Just listen to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

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Budget

Deja Vu: House GOP Reignites The Medicare Fight With Its Budget

Brian Beutler | March 20, 2012, 11:36AM

On Tuesday, House Republicans unveiled an updated version of their controversial long-term budget -- a sweeping plan that envisions dramatically lower tax rates on wealthy Americans, deep cuts to federal support programs for the poor and the eventual phase-out of the existing Medicare system, which would be replaced by a subsidized private insurance system, including traditional Medicare as an option.

You can read the GOP gloss on their plan here. Among its claims: The latest "Path to Prosperity" "Restores economic freedom and ensures a level playing field for all by putting an end to special-interest favoritism and corporate welfare" and "cuts government spending to protect hardworking taxpayers."

The reaction from the White House was swift.

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Budget

New Report Creates Confusion, Spin Over Obama Budget (CHART)

Brian Beutler | March 16, 2012, 5:34PM

A new Congressional Budget Office report has reignited the spin wars over President Obama's budget, and Republicans are eagerly blasting articles to reporters about how the administration would explode deficits and debt if left to its own devices.

But this line of attack is based on a questionable premise, familiar to veterans of the past year's budget wars.

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Affordable Care Act

An 'Obamacare' Cost Explosion? Hardly -- GOP Distorts CBO Report

Sahil Kapur | March 15, 2012, 2:09PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Houser Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Republicans and conservative media are cherry-picking a figure in a new Congressional Budget Office spending estimate (PDF) to assert that the cost of "Obamacare" has nearly doubled to $1.76 trillion. But the claim ignores the corresponding savings during the additional period of the spending projection, thus distorting the actual cost estimates of the law.

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Medicare

CBO: Raising Medicare Age Means More Uninsured With Reduced Access To Care

Sahil Kapur | January 10, 2012, 3:30PM

Shutterstock/ Andrew Bassett

A new Congressional Budget Office report details the likely impacts of gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, which President Obama privately offered to do last summer but has since backed away from.

Though the policy would save $148 billion from 2012 - 2021, the impacts on seniors illustrate why some progressives are happy that the President's effort to reach a "grand bargain" with Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) ultimately failed. In short, uninsured rates would rise, as would their out-of-pocket costs, and their access to care would be diminished.

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Super Committee

Super Committee Republicans Work The Refs

Brian Beutler | November 17, 2011, 5:10PM

If you're looking for evidence that Republicans aren't worried about actual federal deficits, look no further than their about-face on how to count the Super Committee's budget savings.

The details are technical, but crucial, so bear with me.

At the very end of the debt limit fight, Republicans crowed that the Super Committee's inherent design would make it difficult for the panel's Democrats to insist on tax increases. Because of how the Congressional Budget Office typically scores legislation, they argued, any attempt to raise marginal tax rates from their current Bush-era levels would actually score as a big tax cut and thus a budget buster -- a fact that would make it difficult for the Committee to hit its $1.2 trillion target.

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Jobs

CHART OF THE DAY: CBO Says Dem Plans Create More Jobs

Brian Beutler | November 16, 2011, 5:53AM

Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf's testimony before the Senate Budget Committee Tuesday was full of bad news for the unemployed, and thus for President Obama. This is the stuff Republicans blasted out to reporters: Unemployment will likely be sky high through next year, GDP growth has been and will continue to be anemic.

But his prepared remarks confirm this is in part a product of the GOP's unwillingness to pass the big-ticket items in Obama's jobs bill. And they also imply that the GOP's economic counter-proposals would do almost nothing to actually improve things.

Here's a chart that lays out pretty clearly:

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Newt Gingrich

Former Directors Blast Gingrich's Plan To Eliminate Congressional Budget Office

Brian Beutler | November 9, 2011, 6:00AM

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)

Newt Gingrich wants to swing into Washington like a wrecking ball and demolish the key barriers between the GOP and the end of universal health care. But his primary target isn't Obamacare itself. Rather it's a non-partisan agency most people outside the beltway have never heard of -- but that the D.C. establishment would arise and take arms to protect.

"If you are serious about real health reform, you must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies," Gingrich said at a Saturday debate with embattled pizza entrepreneur Herman Cain. "Every hospital will tell you that if you get the family and patient involved, it is better and less expensive. The Congressional Budget Office refuses to see this as a savings. It wants more bureaucracy and less patient involvement."

In a technical sense, Gingrich is correct. The Congressional Budget Office will make it hard for Republicans to completely repeal Obamacare, even if they unify control of government in 2013. CBO is the agency that evaluates for lawmakers the impact their legislation is expected to have on the federal budget. And unfortunately for Republicans, the health care law was devised to score as a deficit reducer, particularly after its first 10 years of existence. By direct corollary, the CBO says repealing the whole thing would increase projected deficits. For political and (more importantly) procedural reasons, that would make a complete repeal almost impossible.

Some Republicans want to change the rules that make CBO's words so powerful. Gingrich, by contrast, wants to get rid of CBO altogether. In response, former CBO heads are leaping to its defense -- including a key conservative economist, influential among Republicans.

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Super Committee

Why The Super Committee Is Heading For Super Catastrophe

Brian Beutler | November 8, 2011, 5:48AM

As of Tuesday morning, betting on the Super Committee to succeed would be playing the odds.

A key member of the Senate Democratic leadership team has openly predicted the panel will gridlock and fail, and placed the blame squarely on Republicans.

As GOP committee members met privately, Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen -- a Democrat on the panel -- told Bloomberg, "You need to close some of these tax loopholes and you need to generate additional revenue. And so that balance is going to be important. We saw the dueling letters just last week. We had a bipartisan group in the House that said, 'Look, everything is on the table including revenues - tax revenues.' And within 24 hours you had 33 [Republican] Senators say, 'no new net tax revenues.'"

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Chris Van Hollen

Dems Get A Boost For Super Committee Tax Bump

Brian Beutler | October 26, 2011, 3:00PM

With less than a month before their November 23 deadline, Democrats on the deficit Super Committee are facing serious pushback from their Republican counterparts for proposing a broad deal that would reduce deficits by nearly $3 trillion -- including cuts to popular programs like Medicare -- because it also includes more than $1 trillion in new tax revenues, according to aides briefed on private negotiations.

Sources remain mum on the specifics of the cuts and taxes Dems have put forward. And they caution that most, but not all, of the Democrats on the panel support the push -- an effort to achieve multiple Republican votes for a plan modeled on the "grand bargain" President Obama tried to strike with John Boehner.

But they got some unexpected help from Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf who testified before the panel Wednesday. He cited analysis his office did about a year ago, which found that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would carry greater reward than risk -- that the hole they punch in the budget overwhelms the positive impact they have on productivity.

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Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan Takes On Elizabeth Warren And The 99 Percent

Brian Beutler | October 26, 2011, 1:12PM

Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Democrats want the 2012 elections to turn on the question of which party has a better vision for the country, and to win the ensuing battle of public perception, both parties are putting the brightest shine they can on their particular designs.

On Wednesday, the GOP pitted conservative darling Paul Ryan against liberal hero Elizabeth Warren, with Ryan serving as a tribune to wealthy Americans and Warren as a populist fighter for working people.

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Health Care

CHART OF THE DAY: Repealing ObamaCare Would Be Disastrous For The Budget

Brian Beutler | October 24, 2011, 2:37PM

President Barack Obama

The Government Accountability Office has updated its fiscal outlook for the U.S. government and come to some familiar conclusions. The country has a long term imbalance that will have to be addressed, but not until today's economic woes have passed. If Congress simply does nothing -- and allows the Bush tax cuts, and other temporary laws to expire -- the country's fiscal health will improve significantly over the long term.

But the report implies something that's been lost in the recent partisan debate over the country's future: repealing ObamaCare would consign us to swift, ugly fiscal and health care crises.

The health care reform law will extend subsidized private health insurance to millions of Americans, paid for with new taxes and Medicare savings. But it also included numerous demonstration projects and reforms intended to rein in the growth of health care costs, and thus Medicare spending. Some of them have great promise -- if they can survive.

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Super Committee

Why All Of Washington Is Screaming "Go Big!" Into The Wind -- At Least For Now

Brian Beutler | September 16, 2011, 6:20AM

The new mantra in Washington is "Go Big!"

It started with Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles -- the co-chairs of President Obama's fiscal commission -- and is now on the lips of scores of members of Congress in both parties.

Joining about two dozen other senators Thursday, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) urged the new deficit Super Committee "We're with you! Be brave! Be bold! Go Big!"

Even President Obama wants them to "Go Big!" -- he'll be sending Super Committee members a list of deficit reduction proposals that go way beyond the $1.5 trillion they're aiming for, and hopes to use those extra savings to finance his jobs bill.

But this isn't realistic if you listen to the members themselves, particularly Republicans.

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Super Committee

Super Committee GOP Unconvinced By CBO Chief On Jobs, Austerity

Brian Beutler | September 15, 2011, 6:10AM

Rep Dave Camp (R-MI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

So did CBO Director Doug Elmendorf make any headway convincing Super Committee Republicans that a). the economy needs a short term boost of near term spending and tax cuts, and b). that the country shouldn't dive headlong, and unnecessarily, into austerity?

If Dave Camp is any indication, the answer is no.

The Michigan Republican, and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee said he disagreed with Elmendorf's cautionary testimony.

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Jobs

Blue Dogs Cool To Obama Jobs Vision

Brian Beutler | September 14, 2011, 1:29PM

Rep. Heath Schuler (D-NC)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed remarks by Rep. Kurt Schrader to Rep. John Barrow. TPM regrets the error.

Blue Dog Democrats are pushing members of the joint deficit Super Committee to reduce the deficit significantly more than they've been tasked with. But they don't want to talk about President Obama's jobs plan. And beneath the surface its clear that there are major differences between the White House and conservative members of his party.

Leaders of the Blue Dog caucus held a press conference in the Capitol Visitor's Center Wednesday to push the Super Committee to "go big." But thanks to an explicit efforts by Democrats and the administration the deficit panel's work has become linked to the idea of job creation, and Obama's jobs bill. But the Blue Dogs didn't really want to talk about it.

After the press conference I asked Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) whether he agreed with CBO chief Doug Elmendorf -- and by extension Obama -- that the wisest economic path involves near term stimulus followed by long-run fiscal restraint.

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Super Committee

Super Committee Riven By Major Divide Over Basic Facts

Brian Beutler | September 14, 2011, 5:59AM

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)

Political debates over deficits and debt are always marked by obfuscation and technicality. The numbers are huge and frightening, the terms obscure and technical, and the simple, fundamental point of the argument gets buried underneath this avalanche of panic and esoterica.

But for a brief moment Tuesday, under questioning from Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), Congress' top economic analyst made it perfectly clear to everybody who was listening.

"I think really the fundamental question for you is not how we got here, but where you want the country to go, what role do you and your colleagues want the government to play in the economy and the society?" said Doug Elmendorf, who heads the Congressional Budget Office. He was addressing the six Democrats and six Republicans on the new joint deficit committee, and for three hours he did his best not to get buried under the same avalanche.

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Super Committee

CBO Chief Gives De Facto Boost To Obama Jobs Plan

Brian Beutler | September 13, 2011, 2:36PM

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

The Congressional Budget Office would be stepping out of bounds if it endorsed specific legislation or even hazy policy objectives. But it's hard to read CBO chief Doug Elmendorf's testimony to the joint deficit Super Committee Tuesday as anything other than a de facto endorsement of President Obama's broad strategy to boost the economy: legislation that spends money to hire people and reduces payroll taxes in the near-term, and that reduces deficits by even greater amounts in the middle and end of the decade.

"If policymakers want to achieve both a short-term economic boost and long-term fiscal sustainability the combination of policies that would be most effective according to our analysis would be changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit today, but narrow it in the coming decade," Elmendorf told the panel's 12 Democrats and Republicans. "The combination of fiscal policies that would be most effective would be policies that cut taxes or increase spending in the near-term, but over the medium and longer-term move in the opposite direction."

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CBO

Worse Than It Looks: CBO Says Economic Outlook More Dire Than Reported

Brian Beutler | August 24, 2011, 10:52AM

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

Partisans will surely find things to love and hate about CBO's updated economic outlook. It projects that the 2011 deficit will be lower than the last two years' deficits, but still near record highs. It forecasts a slow but steady economic recovery over the next six years. And it makes clear that the country's medium-term fiscal imbalances are manageable unless lawmakers decide to screw things up.

But there's also a major, major caveat.

"CBO initially completed its economic forecast in early July, but it updated the forecast in early August to reflect the policy changes enacted in the Budget Control Act [the debt limit deal]," the report reads. "However, the forecast described here does not reflect any other developments since early July, including the recent swings in financial markets, weakness in certain economic indicators, and the annual revision to the national income and product accounts. Incorporating that news would have led CBO to temper its near-term forecast for economic growth."

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Stimulus

Cut And Grow Fail: CBO Schools Tea Party Freshman In Basic Economics

Brian Beutler | August 11, 2011, 3:15PM

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS)

This story was updated at 4:40 p.m. to include text from Huelskamp's letter

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), a Tea Party-backed freshman who voted against the final debt limit bill, recently asked to hear from the Congressional Budget Office about the impact of government spending on economic growth. It's an article of faith on the right that vastly shrinking government will unleash the forces of private enterprise, and faced with CBO's opposing view, Huelskamp wanted to know the answer to two questions:

1). What current federal departments, agencies, programs, or portions thereof do not contribute to economic growth?

2). In the programs that CBO believes do contribute to economic growth, what level of spending cuts would amount to a level you believe would be significant enough to "probably slow the economic recovery"?

But if the newly elected member of the Budget Committee was hoping the non-partisan CBO would buy into his premise, he'll be sorely disappointed.

In a response letter Thursday, CBO-chief Doug Elmendorf gives Huelskamp a layman's lesson in Keynesian economics: Under current economic circumstances, new federal spending would help economic growth, and current and future cuts could stymie it, particularly if they hit key government investment.

"When demand for goods and services falls short of the economy's ability to produce them, as is the case currently, increasing government spending can increase aggregate demand and thereby narrow the gap between the economy's actual and potential levels of output," Elmendorf writes.

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Congressional Budget Office

CBO: Debt Limit Deal Reduces Deficits At Least $2.1 Trillion

Brian Beutler | August 1, 2011, 11:40AM

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

At this point it's just a formality. Just about every agreed-to spending cut and deficit reduction provision in the debt limit bill had already been scored, leaving the outcome in little doubt.

But the Congressional Budget Office has weighed in and confirms that the debt limit deal will reduce deficits by over $2.1 trillion at a minimum over 10 years.

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Debt

Boehner's Debt Plan Rewrite Faces Test In Thursday Vote

Susan Crabtree | July 27, 2011, 7:02PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

House Republican leaders released a revised debt-reduction bill Wednesday evening after being forced to rewrite the bill so it complies with a promise from Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to produce more spending cuts than new borrowing authority.

The new Boehner bill will cut the deficit $917 billion over ten years and raises the debt limit $900 billion, a net cost savings of $17 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis. In the next year along, fiscal year 2012, the bill would cut $22 billion in spending.

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Debt Ceiling

Hope For Boehner? Some House Conservatives Closing Ranks On Debt Limit Bill

Brian Beutler | July 27, 2011, 11:26AM

On Tuesday, conservative Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) predicted defeat for House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) plan to raise the debt limit.

"I am confident as of this morning that there are not 218 Republicans in support of the plan," he said.

He was counting on the opposition of dozens of House conservatives who have in the past pledged not to raise the debt limit on terms that compromising with Democrats would require.

Twenty-four hours later, after taking a beating from the GOP establishment and party leadership, and after watching Democrats grow more and more confident in their ability to split the Republican coalition, those conservatives are reconsidering their rebellion.

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Congress

CHART OF THE DAY: If Congress Does Nothing, The Deficit Will Disappear

Brian Beutler | June 24, 2011, 6:20AM

President Barack Obama meets with Democratic and Republican leaders

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released its updated long-term budget forecast, which looked surprisingly like the previous version of its long-term budget forecast.

It showed, as one might expect, that if the Bush tax-cuts remain in effect and Medicare and Medicaid spending isn't constrained in some way, the country will topple into a genuine fiscal crisis -- not the fake one the Congress is pretending the country's in right now.

Republicans, of course, seized on that particular projection, and claimed (a bit ridiculously) that it proved the government must adopt their precise policy views: major spending cuts, particularly to entitlement programs.

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Debt Ceiling

CBO Director Elmendorf: Debt Default 'A Dangerous Gamble'

Brian Beutler | June 14, 2011, 10:59AM

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

Congress' top adviser on federal budget issues warned Tuesday that even a brief default on U.S. credit obligations, triggered by a failure to raise the national debt limit in a timely fashion, would be "a dangerous gamble," with potentially far-reaching consequences for the U.S. economy and citizens who rely on crucial social services.

"It is a dangerous gamble because any government that has borrowed as much as ours has borrowed and will need to borrow as much as ours will need to borrow cannot take the views of its creditors lightly," CBO Director Doug Elmendorf told a roomful of reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "Even a small increase in the perceived risk of Treasuries would be very expensive for the countries."

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Debt Ceiling

Top Republican Economist: Default Would Be An Economic Disaster

Benjy Sarlin | June 7, 2011, 4:08PM

Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Contradicting GOP lawmakers who have suggested a US default would not lead to economic disaster, a bipartisan group of budget officials warned on Tuesday that even a brief lapse in payments could trigger a crisis. Among them were Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director under President Bush and a frequently cited Republican economic advisor.

"It's a bad idea," Holtz-Eakin said at a panel discussion of former CBO heads in Washington. "Little defaults, big defaults; default's a bad idea period and there should be no one who believes otherwise."

Holtz-Eakin has supported the GOP's efforts to secure cuts in exchange for raising he debt ceiling, but made clear that at the end of the day it had to be raised. He cited numerous dangers from a default scenario, such as its effect on the bond market.

"The idea that somehow it's a pro-growth strategy to raise interest rates on a permanent basis in the United States is just crazy," he said. "We need to grow at this point more than anything else."

He added that the market would not be easily reassured even after a brief default, likening it to wrecking one's house and then asking for a second mortgage on the property.

CBO directors are chosen by Congress and tasked with providing a nonpartisan assessment of the budget.

Rudy Penner, CBO director under President Reagan, also slammed the suggestion that default was anything but dangerous.

"The dumbest thing to do would be to default even for one day right at this point," he said. "I don't see much good coming out of these notions that somehow if we got a big budget deal it would be OK not to pay interest for a few weeks or few days."

Penner added: "It's playing with matches around gasoline as far as I'm concerned and would be an incredibly stupid thing to do."

Robert Reischauer, CBO director under Presidents Bush Sr. and Clinton, said while he could envision a scenario in which a sudden plunge in the stock market shocked both parties into compromising on a deal, it was too unstable and dangerous an approach to trifle with.

"Do I advocate that? No," he said. "Do I think that's risky? Yes. But we're looking for adult behavior here and seeing none. "

Republicans lawmakers have raised eyebrows in the bond market in recent weeks by suggesting that defaulting on US debt as part of a partisan standoff may not have major consequences for the economy. Last week Moody's warned Congress that even approaching the August 2 deadline that the Treasury Department has set before defaulting on their payments would lead them to downgrade US bonds.

Note: This story has been updated.

Spending

OOPS! Historic 'Spending Cut' Bill Increased Spending By $3 Billion

Brian Beutler | May 16, 2011, 6:19PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

Republicans stormed Capitol Hill in January vowing to slash discretionary spending by $100 billion right off the bat. In their pledge to America, they promised that, "[w]ith common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone."

As time went on, it became clear that they wouldn't get the whole loaf, and the key question became: How many billions of dollars in spending would Democrats agree to cut, without risking massive Republican defections, and, perhaps, a protracted government shutdown?

A few weeks after they cut the deal, we have an answer. It turns out the six-month spending bill Congress passed in April increased discretionary outlays through the remainder of the fiscal year by a bit over $3 billion. In other words, total direct spending will be higher by the end of September than if Congress had just set spending on autopilot for the remainder of the fiscal year back in April.

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Health Care

The GOP's Health Care Repeal Problem: $230 Billion In Lost Revenue And Counting

Brian Beutler | January 6, 2011, 2:16PM

Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John Boehner (R-OH), and Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Since taking the majority -- and even before that -- Republicans have been at pains to explain away a problem they've seen coming for months: the fact that CBO and most analysts find that repealing the health care law will cost money. Big money. But they have a separate, less appreciated problem.

Today, CBO forecast that the 10-year cost of repealing health care reform is actually $230 billion. That's nearly $100 billion higher than one might have expected, given that just under a year ago, the same budget analysts concluded that the Affordable Care Act would reduce the deficit by $143 billion in the first decade.

And if the CBO's projections for the law hold, the cost of repeal will grow larger and larger the longer the law stays in effect.

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Health Care

Boehner: Transparency In House Subject To My Discretion

Brian Beutler | January 6, 2011, 12:42PM

House Minority Leader John L. Boehner (R-OH)

How "open" will House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) more-open House of Representatives be? That's up to John Boehner. At his first press conference as House Speaker Thursday morning, Boehner cautioned that the implementation of the GOP's transparency promise will be left to his discretion. That includes the Repeal of the Job Killing Health Care Law Act -- which will be expedited to the floor without amendment, and will ignore CBO's warning that it will significantly increase the deficit.

"I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit," Boehner said. "CBO's entitled to their opinion, but they're locked within constraints of the 1974 Budget Act."

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Health Care

Dem Source: CBO Says Health Bill Cuts Deficit, Costs $940 Billion

Brian Beutler | March 18, 2010, 9:30AM

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., House Education Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., House Transportation Chairman James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., and House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., during a news conference.

They're here! They're here!

A Democratic source provides TPM with the CBO's final top-line numbers on the health care reform bill--the cost-estimate of the Senate health care bill as amended by a soon-to-be-released reconciliation bill. The findings, as expected, keep the bill in line with the Senate bill's stand alone score:

The bill would reduce the deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years, and potentially by $1.2 trillion in the second ten years (though CBO always warns that projections into the second decade are extremely unpredictable).

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Republicans

No Regrets: Cosponsor Of GOP Budget Gives His Leaders A Pass--Despite Their Unwillingness To Support It

Brian Beutler | February 9, 2010, 2:56PM

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)

One of the handful of cosponsors of a far-reaching roadmap that would involve privatizing both Medicare and Social Security says he has no regrets about supporting the GOP shadow budget. And yet despite the fact that Republican leadership has sought to distance the party from the plan, he says the onus should be on Democrats to hop aboard Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) proposal.

"Anybody that is serious about fixing the fiscal challenges has to address honestly the issue of entitlements," Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) told me in an interview this afternoon, "and that's what Congressman Ryan has done and I commend him for it.

"There are all sorts of positive ideas out there," Price said. "I think that the roadmap is one of those that we ought to be looking at seriously. Congressman Ryan has introduced it through at least two Congress' now. And it's a very thoughtful and important document that I think positively effects the debate."

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Health Care

Why Delay May Be Reform's Worst Enemy

Brian Beutler | January 13, 2010, 2:34PM

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

The politics of health care reform could get even more complicated for Democrats if a bill isn't passed by the end of January, when the Congressional Budget Office releases new long-term U.S. economic projections. If those new projections are more pessimistic than the current projections, which were used to help calculate the cost of health care reform, then the new numbers could increase the expected cost of the bill and wreak havoc on the carefully stitched together compromise that has Democratic budget hawks, especially in the Senate, reluctantly supporting reform.

The good news for Democrats is that the CBO's official cost estimate of the final health care bill will be based on the same assumptions CBO has used all along. The bad news? In the past, when CBO has predicted dramatic changes to the economic forecast, members of Congress have asked analysts to provide unofficial numbers based on the new numbers. And therein lies an opportunity for Republicans eager to drive a wedge between progressives and their more economically conservative brethren in the Democratic Party.

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Congressional Budget Office

CBO: Health Care Reform Will Lower Out-Of-Pocket Burden For Most Consumers

Brian Beutler | November 30, 2009, 12:10PM

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN)

A new CBO report, requested by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) contains some helpful, though not unexpected information about the impact of Senate health care legislation on insurance premiums, particularly in the individual market.

According to CBO, average premiums in the individual market would increase 10 to 13 percent because of provisions in the Senate health care bill, but, crucially, most people (about 57 percent) would actually find themselves paying significantly less money for insurance, thanks to federal subsidies for low- and middle-class consumers, than they would under current law.

Those are two separate findings, but it seems likely that Republicans will use the former finding to attack reform, claiming it will raise people's premiums, and leave people confused about the second finding, which is actually the one that impacts people's pocket books.

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Ben Nelson

Will Concessions, And A Trim CBO Score, Appease Conservative Democrats On Health Care?

Brian Beutler | November 19, 2009, 11:37AM

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)

Conservative Democrats couldn't have asked for better top-line numbers from the CBO on Senate health care legislation. Low total cost, big long-term deficit reductions, millions insured, and a public option that insures perhaps one percent of the population. But is that enough to actually cool their heartburn?

Well, yes and no.

"Listen, anytime you add more to deficit reduction, you have to say that it's a move in the right direction," Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told reporters yesterday. "So there's no doubt...that clearly would be one [area of improvement]--but again you have to have a lot of faith and trust in the scoring system."

Nelson cautioned that the CBO numbers released yesterday are preliminary, and subject to some uncertainty, but basically applauded the bill for being fiscally responsible.

But is that what's really driving the moderates' skepticism?

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CBO

CBO Says Higher Premiums Under Senate Public Option, 'Opt-Out' Clause Would Impact One-Third Of Consumers

Brian Beutler | November 19, 2009, 12:37AM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

The CBO has posted its first analysis of the Senate's health care bill, which you can access
here.

As advertised, the bill reduces the deficit considerably in both the near- and long-term, while expanding coverage to 94 percent of Americans. By 2019, 25 million people would be buying insurance through a health insurance exchange.

However, it's not all roses. For instance, based on an assessment of the political popularity of the public option, the CBO has concluded that enough states will "opt out" to prevent a full third of consumers from purchasing government insurance.

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Health Care

Reid Outlines Bill For Caucus, Warns Conservative Dems That Reconciliation Is Still An Option

Brian Beutler | November 18, 2009, 6:45PM

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)

At a special evening meeting of the Democratic caucus tonight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined, in broad strokes, the details of his health care bill, which the CBO has found, in a preliminary analysis, will expand coverage to 94 percent of Americans while reducing the deficit. And earlier in the day, during a separate meeting about floor procedure, Reid let three of his party's key skeptics know that if they join Republicans at any stage of the process to block the bill, he still retains the option of passing major parts of it through the filibuster proof budget reconciliation process.

In response to a question from TPMDC Nelson told reporters that, at a meeting this afternoon with Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Reid "talked about process, procedure, discussion about reconciliation and a whole host of issues of that sort."

"Nobody's really jumping up and down to push for reconciliation," Nelson said, "he's not threatening that, but anybody can conclude that if you don't move something on to the floor, that is one of the possibilities."

Nelson said he has still not committed to vote for even the first procedural vote, but in a sign that he's leaning toward bringing a bill to the floor, he emphasized his view that the floor debate is a chance to improve the legislation. "I wanted to make it clear that that is, unlike some are suggesting, is not the vote...it's a motion to enter into the debate and possible amendments and improvements of the legislation" Nelson said. "The vote is the second cloture vote, and that is the cloture on a motion to cease debate, and I wanted that clear, because I've already begun to see people out there say, 'oh no, no, if you vote [to take it up] you've voted for health care."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has explicitly stated that the Republican party will treat Democrats who vote for any procedural motion as if they've voted for the entire health care bill.

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CBO

Reid To Unveil Health Care Bill To Caucus At Evening Meeting

Brian Beutler | November 18, 2009, 9:36AM

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Max Baucus (D-MT)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will unveil and discuss his health care bill to Democrats at a special 5 pm caucus meeting tonight, leadership sources say. Reid hopes to brief the caucus before the bill is publicly unveiled, and that could happen late tonight. A CBO analysis of that legislation is expected to be unveiled publicly somewhat earlier in the day, and despite some last minute road bumps, Reid is very pleased with the report.

Reid may give the public 72 hours to review the bill before holding a cloture vote on a motion to proceed this weekend, though he may call for that vote slightly earlier.

Republicans, led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) are expected to call for the entire bill to be read aloud before debate can begin in earnest after the Senate returns from a week-long Thanksgiving recess at the end of the month.