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Originally posted by: alanleroyQuote
Originally posted by: pjstroh
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Originally posted by: alanleroy
Why yes. The CBO rescinded their 2011 Budget Deficit Reduction Projection so quietly that PJ could not hear it. Yet still he knows...even if there really is no evidence as AlanLeroy originally stated and PJ's Pulitzer Prize winning organization confirmed and the CBO now admits. Perhaps PJ really believes that 2011 is "earlier this year" as he claimed. Maybe he'll catch up with the rest of us before too long. We can only hope.
The CBO's original estimate was based on the non-existent evidence AlanLeroy passionately explains we just don't have...and our the whole board got a little dumber. But that was ancient times...2011. SO how about one from last month?
June 2015 - CBO Report
- somewhere between 100 billion and 300 billion dollars
So first PJ posts a link to the article from the Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker which specifically points out there is not agreement that the ACA is responsible for medical cost reduction and therefore deficit reduction. He Blatantly Titles that link: "Obamacare is reducing the deficit" Even thought the linked article does not make that claim.
Next he links to a favorable 2011
ten year projection by the CBO claiming it was from this year. In 2014 this projection was repudiated by the CBO because "the law had been changed and delayed so much that there is no longer a credible way to estimate the long-term effects on the deficit of all elements of the program.....CBO and JCT can no longer determine exactly how the provisions of the ACA that are not related to the expansion of health insurance coverage have affected their projections of direct spending and revenues,”
Finally he links to a 2015 projection by the CBO which claims a negative impact on economic growth and employment yet a deficit savings of around 137 Billion over 10 years.....even though just a year earlier the CBO claimed there was
'NO CREDIBLE WAY TO ESTIMATE THIS'.
The linked analysis does warn that "The uncertainty is sufficiently great that repealing the ACA could reduce deficits over the 2016–2025 period—or could increase deficits by a substantially larger margin than the agencies have estimated". Essentially they are saying this is their current best guess as to future deficits....even though they had already stated there was no credible way to estimate this.
And so at every twist and turn PJ has tried to point out how moronic and idiotic my position is and I keep coming back to point out how his linked articles either don't support his position or have been rescinded or are so uncertain in their estimates they use a disclaimer that admits an exact opposite outcome is also a distinct possibility.
And I admit that my responses got increasingly mean spirited and I'm sorry for that. I truly believe that there is nothing to indicate that the ACA has reduced the deficit. I'm not saying that because I'm a Republican who hates President Obama because I'm not and I don't. It is clear that the implementation has not been smooth and there have been massive cost overruns at both the state and federal level that are not counted in the ongoing numbers....Just like the added costs to business and the IRS are not included in any cost accounting that I've ever seen....processing 100 Million extra forms a year and the corresponding enforcement infrastructure could easily eat up the projected 13 billion a year deficit savings...so at best we're just shifting some costs from the Government to Business and other areas of Government.
Clearly this is not settled science. The
10 year projected deficit reduction that PJ is now hanging his hat on is based on new taxes and cuts to Medicare overcoming the inherently negative employment and growth effects.
It's possible the CBO is right....but when a government agency:
1. First claims it is not possible to estimate certain long term impacts to revenue and expense.
2. Magically performs such an analysis
3. Calculates a wide savings variance of 100-300 billion dollars over 10 years.
4. Qualifies that savings admitting it could also be an equally large loss...
That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the numbers. Maybe we could agree on that....but I doubt it.
