Free Republic

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future,” Barack Obama swore to us during the health care debate. Some 2.5 trillion dimes later, it’s clear the president had no idea what he was talking about. The latest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office project that Obamacare will drive up deficits by $250 billion in the first 10 years. Then again, the CBO also predicted that the original Medicare program would only cost $12 billion by 1990. Its actual price tag was $110 billion. Missed it by that much. Republican...

Congressional budget experts say a climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade. The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was the second positive analysis of the bill by a government agency in a month, but is likely to carry more weight than a similar report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The CBO is the entity responsible for providing Congress with nonpartisan analyses of economic and budget issues, and lawmakers rely on it for guidance. The CBO report was immediately hailed by the bill's...

On the yearlong course to getting their beloved healthcare reform passed, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats didn’t always hear what they wanted to hear from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gatekeepers. But when they finally did on the days leading up to the historic March 21 vote, they dismissed an important CBO caveat in order to strike while the iron was hot. Now, hardly to the surprise of ObamaCare critics like political commentator and former Colorado Congressman, Bob Beauprez (R), the CBO says the cost is going to be much higher than originally projected. So, what was the caveat back...

The director of the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the health care reform legislation would cost, over the next ten years, $115 billion more than previously thought, bringing the total cost to more than $1 trillion. The revised figure is due to estimated costs to federal agencies to implement the new health care reform bill – such as administrative expenses for the Internal Revenue Services and the Department of Health and Human Services -- and the costs for a "variety of grant and other program spending for which specified funding levels for one or more years are provided in...

The Congressional Budget Office has doubled the estimated increases of some costs resulting from the sweeping health care reform legislation passed this year. A CBO report sent Tuesday to Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said the estimated rise in discretionary spending - which is spending requiring annual congressional authorization - over the first 10 years under the new legislation could exceed $115 billion. On March 11, exactly two months earlier, the non-partisan CBO reported the estimated increase for discretionary spending could exceed $55 billion.

About two weeks ago the Obama Administration was blushing as it boasted about the "favorable" numbers its administration received from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The fact that the CBO is appointed by members of the President's own party (the majority in Congress are Democrats) made some skeptical. However, the experts outside of the CBO and the White House looked at the numbers and said, "wait a minute!" The numbers are scary and the budget is pointing at a direction that will make the US appear to be little more than a typical debtor nation. This is not something "down...

About two weeks ago the Obama Administration was blushing as it boasted about the "favorable" numbers its administration received from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The fact that the CBO is appointed by members of the President's own party (the majority in Congress are Democrats) made some skeptical. However, the experts outside of the CBO and the White House looked at the numbers and said, "wait a minute!" The numbers are scary and the budget is pointing at a direction that will make the US appear to be little more than a typical debtor nation. This is not something "down...