Free Republic

...Unfortunately for the Secretary, however, the Congressional Budget Office has on numerous occasions confirmed that any claims the law will improve Medicare’s solvency revolve around notional double-counting under federal budgetary conventions. A January CBO letter found that “the majority of the [Medicare] trust fund savings…would be used to pay for other spending and therefore would not enhance the ability of the government to pay for future Medicare benefits.” And in a March letter, CBO quantified the amount of that double-counting, estimating that, if the law’s Medicare savings were actually set aside to improve the solvency of the Medicare trust fund...

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...