tagged w/ CBO
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Ryan and the Teapublicans are finding it increasingly difficult to sell their message outside of their tightly controlled gatherings, especially when America is hip to hard data like today's study results from the Congressional Budget Office that reveals income gains for the wealthy 1% grew from 9 percent of the nation's income in 1976 to 24 percent today -- a whopping 281% growth -- while the bottom 99% saw an income gain of only 16% during the same period.
http://veracitystew.com/2011/10/26/new-study-income-inequality-no-longer-a-myth-chart/Ryan and the Teapublicans are finding it increasingly difficult to sell their message... more
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A citizen's common sense perspective about the current US debt ceiling talks.
http://wp.me/pTMrz-4CA citizen's common sense perspective about the current US debt ceiling talks.... more
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The Associated Press story that has Congress in a tizzy says that the CBO reads the new budget deal as massively less thrifty than advertised. However, there’s a crucial error in the reporting. See if you can spot it.
** A new budget estimate released Wednesday shows that the spending bill negotiated between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner would produce less than 1 percent of the $38 billion in claimed savings by the end of this budget year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would pare just $352 million from the deficit through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending [...]
The CBO study confirms that the measure trims $38 billion in new spending authority, but many of the cuts come in slow-spending accounts like water-and-sewer grants that don’t have an immediate deficit impact. **
Did you find it? The bill to be voted on tomorrow does not reduce spending in FY 2011 by $38.5 billion. That’s because $12.5 billion of the spending cuts have already been passed and enacted by this Congress in three previous continuing resolutions. The comparison being made to arrive at these number looks back to December, so this may be an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s still misleading work from AP. What’s more, with defense spending increasing, offset by domestic spending reductions, the impact remains major for those of us not working for defense contractors and requiring government services.
Here’s the CBO document that has been released, and you’ll see that they make a distinction between budgeting authority and actual outlays. Outlays come from appropriations from previous years that actually get spent in 2011. Budgeting authority is what will be authorized in this budget. It’s a worthwhile distinction to make, but it’s also not terribly meaningful. The stimulus package is still extant in FY 2011 and still supposed to be spending money; that would account for the major difference between budgeting authority and outlays in the Transportation and HUD section of the budget. There’s always a lag between budgetary authority and outlays; that doesn’t mean there’s no impact from cuts to budgetary authority.
What’s being missed here is the opportunity cost. If the budget were agreed to, say, last year, many of the unused spending accounts and rescissions would have been replaced with actual useful spending. That’s basically the function of the budget process. You would have to believe that Dave Obey and Dan Inouye’s omnibus deal would have put all that budgetary authority – including Census spending in 2011! – on auto-pilot. There’s a serious opportunity cost here at a time when the economy is weak, unemployment is high and the country has work to be done.
CBO claimed in a separate unreleased document that the cuts to Kent Conrad’s co-ops and bonuses to states for enrolling more children in health insurance programs won’t produce savings because the spending authority was unlikely to be used. It’s amusing that CBO thinks Kent Conrad’s co-ops are worthless, but since when do they issue this kind of analysis? It seems very tailored to the idea that there’s nothing to see here with this budget deal. I would grant that the decision to include mandatory cuts saves a lot of money from being cut in the short run and the long run.
Then there’s the fact that this budgetary authority creates a new baseline for future spending, that will get reduced over time. When President Obama issued a discretionary budget freeze, he claimed $400 billion in savings over 10 years, and the CBO backed him up on it. There’s nothing different going on with this budget deal. In addition, the elimination of year-round Pell grants scores as a $40 billion reduction over 10 years. There are long-term fiscal consequences to this deal, as CBO indicates.
This is at least the fourth AP story trying to explain away the deficit reduction in the 2011 budget deal. Considering how many transparency measures will have their funding cut, I appreciate AP’s effort, but I’m not sure they’re providing the whole story.
It’s somewhat valuable to the President to have this out there, to buck up his supporters who have been chastened by the budget deal. But the timing couldn’t be worse. The bill hasn’t passed yet. They passed the rule for the bill yesterday without one dissenting vote from the Republicans, and the final vote should happen today. In fact, it has to happen today – funding from the last stopgap runs out at midnight. And then out comes this AP story that the deal only cuts spending by $353 million, which could spook plenty of conservatives already on the fence about the measure. That’s why the GOP leadership is fighting back.
** “This bill will cut $315 billion in Washington spending over ten years, $78 billion compared with the President’s request this year alone,” Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, said. “Democratic spin and arcane budget jargon doesn’t change that.” **
The GOP House leadership is really pissed at Tim Pawlenty for trying to derail the deal, and this report will only anger them further. Boehner’s whip operation is definitely nervous and trying to nail down the last few votes. (David Rogers, by the way, is far better than AP at telling the entire story of what CBO said.)
Some Democratic Congresswomen are fasting in protest of this bill. Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee think they can get 60-70 votes. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) told Politico “I don’t see any chance that this fails unless the bottom falls out with the House Republicans.” A story like this, flawed as it is, could cause that bottom to drop.
And then you have the Senate, where Lindsey Graham is going nuts over the removal of one $50,000 project to study the Port of Charleston from the deal. He vowed to “tie the Senate up in knots,” and that could start with a filibuster of the vote tomorrow. That would by itself cause at least a short-term government shutdown.
Nobody seems to be anxious about this. Maybe it’s nothing and the deal will pass. I think there’s enough doubt, however, to make the day interesting.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/14/cbo-score-of-budget-deal-could-make-house-passage-difficult/The Associated Press story that has Congress in a tizzy says that the CBO reads the... more
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Misrepresenting testimony from the CBO director, conservative media claim the health care reform law will eliminate 800,000 jobs. In fact, CBO said the law will "reduc[e] the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, and as health expert Paul Van De Water stated, "If people voluntarily choose to reduce their hours of work ... that's not killing jobs."
MUCH MORE AT LINK... (please feel free to see the level of research and CREDIBLE sources that Media Matters provides)Misrepresenting testimony from the CBO director, conservative media claim the health... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote to overturn health care reform on January 12. The bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and set the nation’s health care laws back to the way they were last March, has no chance of becoming law. The GOP controls the House, but Democrats control the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate Democrats will block the bill.
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones reports that the 2-page House bill carries no price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ACA would save $143 billion dollars over the next decade. The GOP repeal bill contains no alternative plan. So, repealing the ACA would be tantamount to adding $143 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.
Why are the Republicans rushing to vote on a doomed bill without even bothering to hold hearings, or formulate a counter-proposal for the Congressional Budget Office to score? Kevin Drum of Mother Jones hazards a guess:
[Speaker John] Boehner [(R-OH)] knows two things: (a) he has to schedule a repeal vote because the tea partiers will go into open revolt if he doesn’t, and (b) it’s a dead letter with nothing more than symbolic value. So he’s scheduling a quick vote with no hearings and no CBO scoring just so he can say he’s done it, after which he can move on to other business he actually cares about.
An opportunity?
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that all this political theater around repealing the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity for Democrats to remind the public about all the popular aspects of the bill that the GOP is trying to strip away.
Last weekend several key provisions of the ACA took effect, including help for middle income seniors who are running up against the prescription drug “donut hole.” Until last Saturday, their drugs were covered up to a relatively low threshold, then they were on their own until they spent enough on prescriptions for the catastrophic coverage to kick in again. Those seniors will be reluctant to give up their brand new 50% discount on drugs in the donut hole.
Another crack at turning eggs into persons
A Colorado ballot initiative to bestow full human rights on fertilized ova was resoundingly defeated for the second time in the last midterm elections. Attempts to reclassify fertilized ova as people are an attempt to ban abortion, stem cell research, and some forms of birth control. Patrick Caldwell of the American Independent reports that new egg-as-person campaigns are stirring in other states where activists hope to take advantage of new Republican majorities.
Personhood USA, the group behind the failed Colorado ballot initiatives, claims that there is “action” (of some description) on personhood legislation in 30 states. Caldwell says Florida may be the next battleground. Personhood USA needs 676,000 signatures to get their proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Right now, they have zero, but they promise a “big push” in 2011.
Ronald McDonald = Joe the Camel
In AlterNet, Kelle Louaillier calls for more regulation of fast food industry advertising to children. New research shows that children are being exposed to significantly more fast food ads than they were just a few years ago. Other studies demonstrate that children give higher marks to food products when they are paired with a cartoon character. Louaillier writes of her organization’s campaign to prevent fast food companies from using cartoons to market fast food to kids:
For our part, my organization launched a campaign in March to convince McDonald’s to retire Ronald McDonald, its iconic advertising character, and the suite of predatory marketing practices of which the clown is at the heart. A study we commissioned by Lake Research Partners found that more than half of those polled say they “favor stopping corporations from using cartoons and other children’s characters to sell harmful products to children.”
Local elected officials are joining the cause, too. Los Angeles recently voted to make permanent a ban on the construction of new fast food restaurants in parts of the city. San Francisco has limited toy giveaway promotions to children’s meals that meet basic health criteria. The idea is spreading to other cities.
2011 trendspotting: Baby food
The hot new snack trend for 2011 is mush, as Bonnie Azab Powell reports in Grist. In an attempt to burnish its portfolio of “healthier” snack options for kids Tropicana (a PepsiCo company) is introducing a new line of pureed fruit and vegetable slurries. The products, sold under the brand name Tropolis, feature ground up fruits and veggies, vitamin C, and fiber in a portable plastic pouch. These “drinkified snacks” or “snackified drinks” will be priced at $2.49 to $3.49 for a four-pack, making them more expensive than fresh fruit.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
House Republicans will hold a... more
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(AP) Congress' independent budget agency says the cost to taxpayers of the contentious $700 billion financial rescue has dwindled down to $25 billion.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as of this month the government will recoup most of the money spent. The $25 billion represents unrecovered money spent to bail out insurance giant American International Group and automakers Chrysler and GM. All three, however, have paid back some of their rescue money.
The payback outlook is far rosier than it was in August when CBO forecast losses of $66 billion and in March when it foresaw losses of $109 billion.
In a report issued Monday, CBO said the brighter prospects are the result of repurchases of preferred stock by recipients of bailout funds, a lower estimated cost for assistance to AIG and to the automotive industry, and lower participation in mortgage assistance programs.
The bailout fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, became hugely unpopular with the public and in Congress. Advocates and even some critics, however, credit it for stabilizing the financial sector in the wake of Wall Street's meltdown in 2008.(AP) Congress' independent budget agency says the cost to taxpayers of the... more
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It seemed like a slow news week and then all of sudden NASA blew up the moon and Obama won a Nobel and, well, News! So here are some other things that slipped under the news radar.
Vaclav Klaus is the President of the Czech Republic, and after Ireland voted to accept the EU's Lisbon Treaty (in effect a constitution for Europe) his signature is the last thing Europe needs for Lisbon to become a reality. Well, he just pushed it off again this week. Read more at FP Passport: Klaus adds another hurdle
Google doesn't want you to freak out about Google Books. They just settled a big lawsuit with publishing industry groups and co-founder Sergey Brin wants to be clear with the public that the technology will not completely devalue books for the authors and publishers. Read Brin's op-ed at the NY Times: A Library to Last Forever
The health care debate continues! Oh you didn't hear about it? There may well be a Senate vote next week, but this week the Congressional Budget Office said the Baucus plan could actually cut the deficit. Read more from the AP: CBO: Health Bill costs $829 billion over decade
Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who faces at least one charge of corruption, lost his immunity to prosecution while in office. He said he felt 'invigorated' and vowed to fight. Read more from the BBC: Defiant Berlusconi vows to fight
A new game in the UK called Internet Eyes is turning Britain's thousands of CCTV cameras into a game for profit. Spot a crime - win up to 1000 pounds! More from FP Passport: New internet game offers cash prizes for spotting crime
Oh, and, lots of other people won Nobel Prizes this week. See the list at: nobelprize.org
Finally, this video has been making the rounds today. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) stood on the floor of the House and took a shot at the GOP, telling them that Americans don't care about their feelings (they care about health care!). Whether you agree with him or not, it's a refreshingly sincere voice in the politics of late. Crooks and Liars has the video: Rep. Alan Grayson: I Will Not Apologize- America Doesn't Care About Your Feelings
Any other stories you think we missed? Submit them at Current News and let us know!
Some of our other stories from the week:
- Prescription drug abuse in South Florida
- Did the US capture an Iranian nuclear scientist? – Reasons to think they did
- Love in Gaza: A Palestinian couple marries against all odds
- Death Penalty in the US: Ohio halts executions
- Oktoberfest in Palestine – Taybeh Brewery (Video)It seemed like a slow news week and then all of sudden NASA blew up the moon and Obama... more
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WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says lawmakers will work weekends to complete a sweeping health care bill because "nothing can be more important than this."
Senate debate is getting under way Monday afternoon on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Reid, D-Nev., said the nation's health care system has created an economic crisis for thousands of Americans and Congress needs to address the problem.
Reid said the Senate will work Saturdays and Sundays in December. He said: "There's not an issue more important than finishing this legislation."
Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the bill would spend trillions of dollars that the country can't afford. He said the measure was "out of touch with the American people."
Congressional budget experts say the health care bill on the Senate floor would lower the average price of insurance premiums if it passes, although millions would face higher costs.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the legislation would raise premiums on non-group policies by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent before figuring in the federal subsidies that are designed to defray the cost of coverage. Once the government aid is included in the calculations, average premiums would be as much as 59 percent lower than is now the case.
The CBO says the bill would have a far smaller impact on the cost of small group and large group insurance.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34209690/ns/politics-capitol_hill/WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says lawmakers will work weekends to... more
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Think the House health care reform bill's too long? Not after the Senate whittles away at it.
The thing to worry about the House health reform bill isn't what the Senate will add but what it will take away.
http://www.slate.com/id/2234864/Think the House health care reform bill's too long? Not after the Senate whittles... more
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House Republicans' healthcare alternative would reduce the federal deficit by almost $70 billion over the next 10 years -- but the proposal would only offer insurance to an additional 3 million Americans, according to a cost analysis of the bill.
The numbers released Wednesday night spell mixed news for Republicans, who touted their amendment -- expected to cost about $61 billion over 10 years-- as more effective than the trillion-dollar bill House Democrats introduced last week.
While the GOP's effort is noticeably cheaper, it pales in comparison to the 36 million uninsured Americans that the Congressional Budget Office previously predicted Democrats' reform could cover.
Some highlights from the CBO analysis:
-- The amendment's tort reform provisions would reduce federal spending on mandatory programs by about $41 billion over 10 years.
-- The GOP's bill could also reduce average premium costs over 10 years, by varying amounts depending on the size of the insurance pool. However, the CBO offers one crucial caveat: Not every American in each insurance category would see a premium decrease. Rather, analysts predict, more cost burden would fall on sicker Americans, or the costs could be hared disparately among states, which means some beneficiaries could see premium increases (while others do not).
-- Finally, the amendment could reduce the deficit by about $18 billion after 2019, according to the CBO score. Still, the office stresses -- much as it did when it scored the House bill -- that projections beyond 2019 are too difficult to state with any degree of certitude.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/66461-cbo-scores-gop-healthcare-alternativeHouse Republicans' healthcare alternative would reduce the federal deficit by... more
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Phil Ellis may be the most powerful guy you've never heard of in the health-care debate. A senior analyst with the Congressional Budget Office, Ellis is the man who has to decide what it would cost to rebuild the health insurance system. He has essentially condemned two legislative proposals by slapping them with trillion-dollar price tags. A third plan rocketed to prominence after he said it would cost much less.
In the coming weeks, Ellis's judgments will shape the fate of President Obama's reform effort. But Ellis, an amiable father of three who hasn't had a day off in about six months, is the first to admit that his painstaking numbers are almost certainly wrong.
"We're always putting out these estimates: This is going to cost $1.042 trillion exactly," he said. "But you sort of want to add, you know, 'Your mileage may vary.' "
As Democrats embark on a plan to reorder one-sixth of the U.S. economy, the CBO is the umpire, charged by Congress with assessing the effect on the federal budget and the potentially profound impact on American lives. The Senate majority leader has vowed to hold no vote on a health plan until the CBO passes judgment. But the agency, while almost universally praised for honest and impartial analyses, does not have a crystal ball.
"Everyone in the process -- especially the CBO -- knows that it is very, very difficult to make these estimates and that they're no more than very educated guesses," said Alice Rivlin, who served as the CBO's founding director in 1975. "But if you didn't have this process, we know that the consequence is that everyone would want to spend money and not pay for it."
...More about how the CBO generates its estimates...Phil Ellis may be the most powerful guy you've never heard of in the health-care... more
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Liberals are still not happy about the bill put together by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. But as of Wednesday afternoon, it has a few points in its favor: 81 billion of them, in fact. That's because the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation have released their preliminary scoring of the bill, including the conclusion that it would reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion.
The big number that Republicans are likely to focus on isn't the deficit reduction, but the total cost of the bill, which the CBO and JCT estimate at $829 billion. That's high, but the fact that it still allows for a deficit reduction, and comes in well under the $1 trillion price tag that Democrats have feared for political reasons, means that the White House and their allies on the Hill are likely to be very happy.
As for whether the bill would work, the CBO and JCT estimated that it would reduce the number of non-elderly U.S. residents who don't have insurance by 29 million. That would still leave 25 million uninsured, one-third of whom are illegal immigrants. But the percent of non-elderly legal residents who are insured would go up from about 83 percent to about 94 percent, and that's the number that Democrats will focus on.Liberals are still not happy about the bill put together by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.,... more
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President Barack Obama's domestic policy proposals will face the reality of skyrocketing deficits on Tuesday when officials release two government reports projecting huge budget shortfalls over the next decade.
The White House budget office and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan arm of Congress, release updated economic forecasts and deficit estimates on Tuesday, providing further fiscal fodder to opponents of Obama's nearly $1 trillion healthcare overhaul plan.
Many of the figures are already known.
The White House has confirmed that its deficit estimate for the 2009 fiscal year, which ends September 30, will inch down to $1.58 trillion from $1.84 trillion after eliminating billions of dollars originally set aside for bank rescues.
Looking forward, an administration official told Reuters the 10-year budget deficit projection will jump by about $2 trillion to roughly $9 trillion from an original forecast of $7.1 trillion.President Barack Obama's domestic policy proposals will face the reality of... more
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rickm8
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for the first time that H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, is deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window - and even produces a $6 billion surplus. CBO estimated more than $550 billion in gross Medicare and Medicaid savings. More importantly, the bill includes a comprehensive array of delivery reforms to set the stage for lowering the future growth in health care costs.
Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion, coupled with the $583 billion revenue package reported today by the House Committee on Ways and Means, fully finance the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform, which will provide affordable health care coverage for 97% of Americans.
“This fulfills the strong commitment of the President and House leadership to enact health reform on a deficit-neutral basis,” said Chairmen Henry A. Waxman, Chairman Charles B. Rangel, and Chairman George Miller. “The reforms included in this legislation will help control health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable coverage to all Americans in fiscally-responsible manner.”
The estimates also cover important reinvestments in Medicare and Medicaid, including phasing in the closing of the “donut” hole in the Medicare drug benefit. The bill’s long-term reform of Medicare’s physician fee schedule to eliminate the potential 21 percent cut in fees, and put payments on a sustainable basis for the future, will cost about $245 billion. Those costs, however, are not included in the net calculations above, as they will be absorbed under the upcoming statutory “pay go” legislation that is pending in the House.The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for... more
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