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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Health Care Saturday Vote Unlikely: CBO Score Not In - Analysts Overwhelmed

If Democrats honor the 72-hour-promised-window to post their health care bill online (do we really believe they will do so, or are we just pretending?) there will be no Saturday health care vote because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not yet scored the monster, pushing a vote to Sunday, if the score arrives tomorrow (Thursday). See update below.

The Hill says analysts are overwhelmed and are working 100 hours a week "to be sure we have a score that's solid as a rock for procedural purposes and potentially litigation purposes...."

Update 3-18-10:
The CBO estimate arrived today, happily coming in at under the $1 trillion price tag, at $940 billion, with deficit savings of about $138 billion.

Hot Air has a must-read on this - go there (click the link below) to see the "Gross Cost of Coverage Provision:

Update (AP): Here’s the key table from CBO’s letter to Pelosi. Via Philip Klein, want to see what a shabby fraud these cost estimates are? Check out the line for “Gross Cost of Coverage Provisions”:...This is why they’re delaying the start of the program, of course. If it kicked in right away, the decade-long estimate would obviously be well into the trillions. So they simply stalled it for four years, incurring just $17 billion in costs — or 1.8 percent of the total 10-year estimate — through 2013 so that wavering Democrats could go back to their districts and tell baldfaced lies to their constituents about the pricetag. A perfect ending to this travesty.
Senator Tom Coburn is on FOXNews this minute saying this is all smoke and mirrors.

Linked by Memorandum - see more discussion of Breaking: CBO releases the actual report.

©2007-2012copyrightMaggie M. Thornton