ObamaCare's Fiscal Insanity; UPDATED

Yesterday the long-awaited "scoring" of ObamaCare was released by the CBO. The numbers purportedly show that the government takeover of the U.S. health care system will cost about $940 billion over the first ten years. As many have noted, including Paul Ryan, the CBO is staffed by generally competent and non-partisan people. However, they can only score what is put in front of them. For that reason, the Democrat majority in Congress provided them with convoluted data to guarantee a specific result. Many have written about the farcical nature of the of the CBO number over the past 24 hours. Here is one example from Investors Business Daily:

By presenting the CBO with incomplete, inaccurate and misleading data, the Democrats in Congress were finally able to come up with a cost score they like: $940 billion.

That's the estimate the CBO arrived at. Like a used car dealer pricing a car at $9,999 instead of $10,000, the hucksters in Congress were anxious to get the official cost below the scary $1 trillion level at which things suddenly sound very unaffordable.

Using the rigged $940 billion estimate, Democratic leaders now hope to force a health care bill through as early as Saturday, seizing 17% of the U.S. economy by simply "deeming" the bill is passed — rather than actually passing it in an up-or-down vote.

In fact, the real cost of this health care takeover is more like $2.5 trillion over 10 years — not $940 billion. That's off by, oh, 166%.

Garbage in, garbage out. The CBO was asked to score a ten-year plan which spends basically nothing in the first four years. This enables the Democrats to make the claim that it only costs $940 billion "over 10 years". They say a picture is worth a thousand words and the following graph, produced by Phillip Klein at the American Spectator, proves this to be true:

Hmmmmm. I can't put my finger on it but something doesn't look quite right.

Even the six-year estimate of the cost, which is what the CBO number actually is, has no realistic chance of verifying. Never in the history of entitlement programs has the cost ever been even close to it's initial estimate, and given the rosy scenario under which this forecast was issued, ObamaCare will certainly be no exception. Out of all the ridiculous statements issuing forth from Democrats yesterday, this one takes the prize:

President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul would be the most significant effort to reduce the nation's deficit since the balanced budget act of the 1990s.

This would be laugh out loud funny if not for the fiscal nightmare that will result from this farce. Does anyone seriously believe that adding a new entitlement for approximately 30 million more people will reduce the deficit? This is patently absurd and based on nothing but smoke and mirrors. Paul Ryan exposed the most egregious accounting chicanery contained in the plan when he confronted Obama at Blair House in February:



Obama had no answer for Ryan and did the only thing he could do: change the subject. Earlier this week Brett Baier of Fox News interviewed Obama and, unlike all other reporters who have questioned The One in the Age of Obama, actually expected answers. Baier repeatedly tried to question Obama about the accounting gimmickry and taxpayer funded bribes contained in ObamaCare. When Baier pressed, like a petulant child Obama became visibly agitated and, you guessed it, changed the subject, even fantasizing about an imaginary earthquake in Hawaii and suggesting ObamaCare would have been the right prescription for said imaginary earthquake:



It's clear from listening to the words emanating from Obama's mouth that he has no idea what a fiscal nightmare Obamacare will be. Either that or he knows but doesn't care. In any case, as Governor Palin has been repeatedly warning, we simply can't afford a mammoth new entitlement when we can't afford the multiple trillions we already owe on existing entitlements. In short, ObamaCare will only exacerbate an already critical fiscal condition. When you're in a hole, you stop digging.

I'll close with an excerpt from today's Wall Street Journal editorial, "March Madness", which succinctly sums up ObamaCare:

Has there ever been a political spectacle like the final throes of ObamaCare? We can't recall one outside of a banana republic, or, more accurately, Woody Allen's 1971 classic "Bananas." Capitol Hill resembles nothing so much as that movie's farcical coup d'etat in San Marcos as Democrats try to assemble the partisan minimum of 216 House votes—if only for an hour or so at some point on Sunday—and no bribe is too costly, no deal too cynical, no last-minute rewrite too blatant.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Ed Morrissey has a post highlighting a leaked internal memo currently circulating among Democrats instructing them to mislead the media and public about the so-called "doc-fix" as we approach Sunday's vote. This gimmick alone, if included in the scoring data sent to the CBO, would destroy the claim that ObamaCare would somehow lower the deficit. It's no wonder the Democrats don't want to discuss the doc-fix since its continued obfuscation provides political cover to Democrats who claim they support ObamaCare due to its wonderful deficit reducing properties. The doc-fix will add another $371 billion to the cost. Oops.

Update II: Paul Ryan discussed the Democrat's cooking of the books this morning on Fox & Friends. His part begins at about the 42 second mark: