Sen Sessions has offerred a letter from the Congressional Budget Office that says that the deficit savings money in the Healthcare bill was double counted. If true this would amount to about a $350 billion error. It would mean that the Healthcare bill is not deficit neutral but instead adds greatly to the deficit and to our national debt.
This is highly relevant. It is not a detail. And it’s not rocket science to get to the bottom of it. There’s either been double counting or there hasn’t. A panel of expert accountants, say 12 dems, 12 GOP plus one Independent, could offer testimony on C-SPAN and CNN and You Tube.
Somebody in USA knows something about accounting. In a week or two we could figure out if there’s been double counting in the scoring of the Healthcare bill or if there hasn’t.
This is a $350 Billion dollar error, not a detail.
It goes to the core promise made by Obama that the Healthcare bill would be “Deficit Neutral”.
But somehow, we appear to have become so polarized that we simply can’t behave prudently. We want to pass this bill through the Senate, a move that will have grave and irreversible repercussions, and not take a couple of weeks to get to the bottom of what appears to be a major error in the cost scoring.
One need not be a fanatical liberal or a fanatical conservative or a fanatical blue dog to feel that an error is being made here. Please don’t tell me that only a person with an ideological political agenda would say that we can wait a couple of weeks to get to the bottom of this double counting alleged by the Congressional Budget Office. If it’s really there, obviously the bill needs to be re-written before any responsible Senate or House could pass it or any responsible President could sign it.
Cancel the Senate vote on Healthcare scheduled for 8:00 a.m. 24 Dec 2009 — re-set that vote till 8:00 a.m. January 15, 2010. Is that asking too much? Give the truth a chance.
Or maybe it doesn’t matter — just ram it through anyway, who cares about deficits, or the national debt? Those things won’t have any effect on our government in the future, right, like they didn’t in Weimar, or in Argentina. Just ram it through! Who cares about the truth? Senators, Congressmen and Presidents have their own special Federal Health Care Plan — top of the line — fully paid for anyway. So bash away — nobody else matters, is that it?
