Obama’s CBO lie – Obama, Pelosi and Reid guilty of blatant manipulation of the CBO score to get ‘their’ number

The gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) are guilty of what is tantamount to lying to the American public.  They have crafted and re-crafted their health care bills, until they get CBO (Congressional Budget Office) scores that they can ‘sell’ as reducing the deficit over the next 10 years.

Two of the most blatant examples of this are:

1. Having ten years of tax revenues, but delaying the implementation of the majority of the health care bill for four years, so there are only six years of costs.
2. Continuously pulling the Medicare ‘doctors fix’ from House and Senate bills, because if the fix is delayed, the CBO is not allowed to count the $300+ billion of cost in their bill costing and deficit calculations.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could use the ‘budgeting’ scheme that Obama, Pelosi and Reid are using?  When you are trying to get a loan and the bank asks for your income and expenses, you could say, “well, this is how much my salary is for the year, but for my expenses, I’m not going to count January 1st through April 15th, because that would make it look like I couldn’t afford the house, so I am only going to count my bills after April 15th.”

No bank would accept that approach, but that is exactly the manipulation that exists in the Democrat’s health care bill, so that Obama, Pelosi and Reid can say, “it reduces the deficit over the first decade.”   Of course it does, if you manipulate the numbers, include ten years of tax revenues, but only six years of program costs, you are able to make it look good for that first ten years.

Even using this manipulation, Pelosi and Reid have had to play ping pong with the CBO, because even with four extra years of tax revenues, they have not been able to show any ‘paper’ deficit reductions, without including all kinds of subtle manipulations to the language of the bill, such as mandating fictional cost savings in certain programs.  As I write this, Pelosi has not been able to provide language for the health-care reconciliation bill, because the CBO score keeps coming back too high, which won’t allow them to perpetuate the lie that it will reduce the deficit.  The bill was supposed to be published online days ago.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on Pelosi’s game of continuous CBS scoring:

The entire political world waited yesterday for a report from the Congressional Budget Office that would either allow Democrats to schedule a vote on Saturday for ObamaCare or collapse the effort altogether.  The six PM deadline came and went without a peep out of the CBO, pushing any potential vote into next week.  What happened?  The Washington Times reports today that the CBO has found itself buried under the task of continually re-scoring ObamaCare proposals — and they’re not alone.

The second, and equally egregious, manipulation relates to the doctors fix.  For years, the Medicare reimbursement schedule  has been flawed, and as a result, each year Congress passes a doctors fix, so that doctors will be paid a reasonable reimbursement.  This year, not passing the ‘doctors fix’ would result in doctor’s Medicare reimbursements being cut by 21%, which would result in most doctors immediately stopping the treatment of all Medicare patients.

However, there is a problem, in order to get a CBO score that shows Obamacare reduces the deficit over the next decade, the ‘doctors fix’ cannot be current law.  The CBO can only count the proposed legislation it is scoring and enacted law.  Reid and Pelosi have killed each bill that has been introduced that includes the doctors fix, because they know that their ‘fictional’ deficit reduction of $130 billion or so over the next decade, would immediately become a $200+ billion deficit increase.   Note: several independent reviews of the Senate bill show a REAL first decade actual cost adding $1 trillion to the deficit, vs. the fictional $130 billion deficit reduction.

The reason for this is that by delaying the doctors fix, the CBO is required to count that 21% that will be added back with the doctors fix, as a cut to Medicare.  So, from the CBO score’s perspective, Medicare has been cut by $300+ billion, when in fact it will be added back as soon as the doctors fix is finally passed.

The order of passage of the bills is key to Pelosi, Reid and Obama’s deception.  So, if health care does pass this weekend, then expect to see a doctors fix bill rushed through next week and signed into law.  It’s important to note, that the gang of three are all on record saying that Medicare reimbursements won’t be cut by 21%, but will be fixed separately, they just don’t come clean with the fact that the reason for doing them separately is to manipulate the CBO score.

Mr. President, is this what you meant by “changing the way Washington works”?  Is lying to the American public really the hope and change you promised?