AP Closer to Truth Than Washington Monthly
The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen is attacking Erica Werner and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP for their July 15th and 16th stories placing a $1.5 trillion price tag on the House Democrat health care plan.
Benen claims they are off by $500 billion since the CBO put a “a roughly $1 trillion cost” on the bill. But it is Benen who has his numbers wrong. The $1.042 trillion number that Benen is probably referring to, is the “net impact of coverage specifications” on page 14 of the CBOs pdf. But that “net impact” to the deficit number includes some offsetting revenue enhancers the Democrats included in their bill including employer and individual fines. Once these revenue raisers are taken out of the equation, thus focusing just on the increased in spending in the bill, the total comes to $1.287 trillion.
We don’t know how the AP gets to $1.5 trillion, but it is a closer number to $1.287 then Benen’s asserted $1 trillion. Plus, considering that the Democrats back loaded the spending in their bill to get as low a CBO score as possible, $1.5 trillion is probably a much truer reflection of the bill’s total costs if we were to shift the analysis one year forward.
Tags: Associated Press, Erica Werner, health care, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
ADCBeast said:
Sep 22, 09 at 7:55 amAnyone who uses the CBO’s forward casting predictions is crazy given the CBO’s track record.
the CBO underestimated Bush43’s budgets every single year. with differences of over 300 billion.
the CBO is only good at backcasting which any accountant worth their salt can do