Ron Hardin posted on August 25, 2009 00:00
The midyear budget outlook that the White House is releasing today will raise the administration’s outlook for the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. Previously, the White House maintained that the federal deficits will total $7.1 trillion over the next decade. The new figures bring the administration’s projections to the same level that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has maintained all along which predict deficits of $9 trillion, over 28% higher than the administration’s previous estimate. Last Friday when the news was “leaked” to the press that the midyear budget outlook would be released this week, an unidentified White House official explained to Reuters, “The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year.” Interesting how the White House’s “new” data must have been well-known to the CBO since they aren’t revising their numbers. Taking that President Obama’s staff somehow missed $2 trillion of federal borrowing over the next 10 years in figuring their budget projections, we have plenty of reason to heavily scrutinize President Obama and congressional Democrats’ sales pitches heralding the “benefits” of their health care plans. The revised budget outlook calls President Obama’s case for health care reform to question. If the administration can’t track $2 trillion from their first six months in office, how accurate do we really think their predictions are concerning the costs and effect their health care proposals will have on average Americans?
The White House’s new 10-year deficit projections only include spending that has already been approved. The $9 trillion figure doesn’t factor in a massive expansion of health care entitlements. The health care bills that are currently before Congress are projected to add at least another $1 trillion to the deficit in the next decade according to conservative cost estimates. Nongovernment analysts of the health care proposals have estimated that they will add anywhere from $1.5 trillion to over $3.5 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. Entitlement programs always exceed the government’s cost estimates. For example, at its inception, Medicare was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990. The true cost of Medicare is well over 10 times the original projections. To give perspective, if the same government agencies underestimate the costs of the current proposals before Congress at the same level as Medicare, the federal deficit will double in ten years, pushing it to roughly 200% of US gross domestic product (GDP). 
President Obama’s economic “experts” haven’t established a reputable track record. The stimulus package was supposed to “create or save” 3 to 4 million jobs in two years and prevent unemployment from rising over 8%. Since it was passed in February, unemployment has risen to 9.4% and the nation has shed nearly 2 million more jobs. Last month, the administration celebrated when unemployment dropped from 9.5% to 9.4% even though the number of jobless Americans actually increased. The drop was attributed to the fact that many of the unemployed have become discouraged and given up on their job hunt, thus shrinking the number of unemployed Americans actively seeking employment. The misread on the stimulus coupled with today’s report that the budget experts in the administration left $2 trillion out of their deficit projections that the CBO had recognized all along doesn’t help build confidence in the administration’s forecasting abilities. In the first half of his first year in office, Obama’s administration has committed a $2 trillion error in figuring the deficit. That is almost double the amount that B. Hussein Obama constantly reminds Americans that he inherited from the Bush administration. Did you catch that? In just over six months, the Obama administration has made a miscalculation that adds more to the deficit than George W. Bush accumulated in eight years.
There is no doubt that this new revelation will add a new argument to the opponents of Obama’s plans to reform the American health care system. However, had Congress obeyed Obama, this would have never had a chance to enter the debates. As the White House announced that the midyear review would be delayed until August, Obama was pounding the table demanding Congress get a health care reform bill on his desk before leaving for the August recess. The president made his demands clear throughout the month of July. After returning from a week-long overseas trip, Obama learned that some legislators were hesitant to support many provisions of the bills emerging from various committees. In the American Thinker, Monte Kulingowski cites a speech from the Rose Garden on July 13 where Obama condescendingly warned opponents, "I just want to put everybody on notice, because there was a lot of chatter during the week that I was gone. We are going to get this done. Inaction is not an option. Don't bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen." After the speech, the president met privately with Democrat lawmakers to reinforce his timetable demands. The president must have made his point clear. "There was a strong agreement by everyone in the room that we can get a bill done before the start of the August recess," explained Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, speaking to the Associated Press after the meeting.
B. Hussein Obama’s plan for health care reform was to utilize the same “blitzkrieg legislating” tactics that delivered the stimulus bill to his desk and pushed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill through the House of Representatives in the dead of night. There were no plans to deal with angry constituents at town hall meetings because no one was supposed to read the bill to begin with. Democrat House Judiciary Chairman, John Conyers, proved this in his speech to the National Press Club Luncheon. Conyers explained on July 27, “I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” In his rush to ridicule the simpletons expecting legislators to actually read legislation that would transform 17% of the American economy, Conyers conveniently forgot to mention that he is an attorney. Some people would see a need to slow down and act deliberately if they were working with such complicated material that would significantly impact every one of their constituents. As the polls show, Congress’ approval numbers continue to fall along with President Obama’s. Conyers and his colleagues might want to reassess the futility of reading bills that they don’t understand. Either find someone to explain them or write them more coherently. Don’t just close your eyes and vote.
After seeing the public outrage over the plan he tried to pressure Congress to ram through, President Obama now wants to encourage a “vigorous” debate on health care reform. Just a month ago, this “vigorous” debate was the furthest thing from Obama’s mind. In fact, if he had his way, he would be relaxing in Martha’s Vineyard right now thinking about the songs that future generations of American children will sing about him and his political genius. However, as more time passes and the public familiarizes themselves with the proposals, it becomes clear why Obama was in such a rush.
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