Another Idol Falls

The debate on ObamaCare was instructive.

I had always thought of the Congressional Budget Office as the Gold Standard – until I learned that they most certainly are not.

It seems that the CBO must assume in their analysis that whatever is planned will happen – even if the Congress says they are going to do something that they will not, and cannot do.

As Mark Steyn said on radio today, if Congress says they intend to sell 2 acre lots on the dark side of the moon, they must factor that into the analysis.

In this case, the Congress was analyzing the PROMISE that Congress was going to CUT THE PAY OF DOCTORS!

Well, Congress may be crazy, but they are not stupid and they know that cutting the pay of doctors will drive doctors out of the profession – and when you are going to add 32 MILLION new patients you need more, not fewer doctors. Congress knew they were not going to cut doctor pay. The doctors knew they were not going to cut doctor pay. The people knew that Congress was not going to cut doctor pay.

More importantly, the CBO knew that Congress was not going to cut doctor pay.

But the CBO did their analysis on the promise that the bill was going to cut doctor pay.

And Congress passed the HealthCare bill to cut doctor pay – and PRPOMPTLY passed another bill un-cutting doctor pay.

Eureka! Congress got the CBO number they wanted as cover for this turkey – and promptly, within a day, pulled the tablecloth from under the CBO plate while still using the CBO numbers to support what they wanted to do even though a new analysis would show the program would cost more that CBO had predicted.

Then there is that ‘promised” $500 billion cut from Medicare – which is NEVER going to happen – but the CBO numbers remain, and are quoted.

This whole fiasco is such a mess. People who would cry ‘lie” if those numbers were done by a person, quote the lie as posted by the CBO as some magical, Papal Pronuncio

Well, perhaps the Papacy is not exactly the right group with which to equate honesty.