Free Republic

The nation’s fiscal path is “unsustainable,” and the problem “cannot be solved through minor tinkering,” the head of the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday morning. Doug Elmendorf, best known for arbitrating the costs of various health care proposals, added his voice to a growing chorus of economic experts who predict dire consequences if political leaders don’t scale back spending, increase taxes or both — and soon. Elmendorf noted a recent CBO report that pegged an increase in the public debt from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion at the end of 2020 if President Barack Obama’s...

JAY CARNEY: First of all, let me just correct you. You asked about the deficit. As the CBO reported yesterday, consistent with what is reported in the past, the CBO projects that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. (snip) And I think one hugely significant one is the historic reduction in health care inflation that we've seen. We've had the slowest rate of health care cost growth in 50 years since the Affordable Care Act was passed, which directly contradict those who oppose the Affordable Care Act. ..... The CBO report says specifically, contrary...

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was heard all over Washington last week when it released its updated budget and economic outlook. Now, the office is attempting to be understood. CBO on Monday posted a "Frequently Asked Questions" document aimed at clearing up the outlook's most controversial conclusion, an estimate that Obamacare would reduce the number of hours worked by the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time workers in 2024.

The Chicago professor examined the law's incentives for the poor not to get a job or work harder, and this week Beltway budgeteers agreed. Mr. Mulligan studies how government choices influence the incentives and rewards for work—and many more people may recognize the University of Chicago professor as a serious economist after this week. That's because, more than anyone, Mr. Mulligan is responsible for the still-raging furor over the Congressional Budget Office's conclusion that ObamaCare will, in fact, harm growth and jobs. But then the CBO ... reported that by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million Americans who were otherwise...

The Obama administration's response to the Congressional Budget Office's prediction that Obamacare will cause 2.5 million fewer Americans to work in the coming years is an opportunity for Republicans to seize the moral high ground on the issue of work. Rather than dispute the CBO's analysis -- which would have been awkward, as the White House has touted CBO's predictions in the past -- the administration is spinning the jobs loss as a kind of liberation. No longer tied down to the pesky need to earn a salary, some Americans will be able to follow their bliss. The is part...

Democrats are increasingly employing a new tack in the battle over a projected reduction of two million jobs due to Obamacare, saying the decline is actually the result of people not being required to work anymore when they don't want to -- a concept labeled "job lock.""Yesterday, the CBO projected that by 2021 the Affordable Care Act will enable more than 2 million workers to escape 'job-lock' – the situation where workers remain tied to employers for access to health insurance benefits," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office said in a news release.The release continued: "In addition to being...

Yesterday, Washington’s official non-partisan bean-counter, the Congressional Budget Office, dropped a bomb. By 2024, says the CBO, Obamacare will reduce the size of the U.S. labor force by 2.5 million full-time-equivalent workers. That’s roughly triple what the CBO had estimated three years ago. Such a sizeable decline in the labor force will have substantial detrimental effects on the U.S. economic and fiscal picture. But the CBO wasn’t responsible for the most amazing thing that happened yesterday. That title belongs to the Obama White House, where Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed that 2.5 million Americans leaving the workforce was a good...

For years, the White House has trotted out the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to show that Obamacare would cut health-care costs and reduce deficits: Live by the sword, die by the sword, the Bible tells us. In Washington, it’s slightly different: Live by the CBO, die by the CBO. The congressional number-crunchers, perhaps the capital’s closest thing to a neutral referee, came out with a new report Tuesday, and it wasn’t pretty for Obamacare. The CBO predicted the law would have a “substantially larger” impact on the labor market than it had previously expected: The law would reduce the workforce...

The Congressional Budget Office released a report that suggests almost 2.5 million workers might lose their jobs (or have their hours cut to part-time) in the next few years thanks to the implementation of Obamacare. The average American might see this as a worrisome report from the non-partisan CBO about the unintended consequence of government’s regulatory take-over of healthcare… But Harry Reid and other Democrat big-wigs are trying to spin this as a positive. The Democrat from Nevada even suggested that the individuals who are set to lose their job should be happy, because they are about to become “free...

Many workers may opt to work less to retain their eligibility for Medicaid or federal subsidies under Obamacare, a new report has found. The Affordable Care Act could reduce the labor force by the equivalent of 2.5 million workers in 2024, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's annual outlook. That doesn't mean employers will start swinging the ax or even that that many jobs will be lost, CBO says. Rather, more people will likely opt to reduce their hours, or leave the workforce entirely, so they stay under the income caps for Medicaid and federal subsidies.

Give Sam Stein credit for being an honest liberal. Confronted with the CBO's findings about the disastrous job-killing effects of Obamacare, Stein didn't try to spin the unspinnable. On today's Morning Joe, Donnie Deutsch invited Stein to play a game of Mad Men. Deutsch first sketched out a 30-second ad making the case against Obamacare--that contrary to what President Obama had said, you can't choose your provider and the program costs the country two million jobs. Deutsch then invited Stein to give the 30-second ad in response. Said Stein, much to the amusement of the panel: "The 30-second response is...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is out with its annual report. It’s a blockbuster. This 165 page monster is filled with dozens of charts, graphs and detailed projections. It will be talked about for weeks. The report provides a dismal outlook for the economy. Here is the CBO forecast for real GDP for 2012 and 2013:

As part of their suicidal rush towards ruining the nation’s healthcare system, King Hussein Obama the First and his minions must be overjoyed that the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of the effect of their latest monstrosity on the federal deficit appears to be a positive one. More specifically, in a letter http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10868/12-19-Reid_Letter_Managers.pdf dated December 19, 2009 to Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid, the CBO estimates that the adoption of Senate Amendment 2786, also referred to as the “Manager’s Amendment”, which is the current version of the Senate healthcare reform bill, will lead to a net reduction in the...

There is a meme that's developing on the left that this thing doesn't exist. That is incorrect