Of course the accounting is a farce. It’s what we’ve been saying all along, second, in terms of terror, to the grab of individual liberty:
The Congressional Budget Office challenged claims by health-care overhaul proponents that Medicare savings in Senate legislation would help finance expanded coverage and postpone the bankruptcy of the medical program for the elderly.
The nonpartisan agency said the $246 billion it projected the legislation would save Medicare can’t both finance new programs and help pay future expenses for elderly covered under the federal program.
Nor could those savings be used to extend the solvency of Medicare, set to run out of money in 2017, the budget office said in a letter to Senate Republicans.
“What we’ve seen is a colossal manipulation” by Democrats “of the accounting scores of CBO” and the independent actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, the Republican who requested the analysis from CBO. He called the letter “a potential game-changer.”
[…]
The budget office said that whenever the Medicare trust fund runs a surplus, the savings are turned over to the U.S. Treasury, which issues bonds to borrow for the future needs of participants in the health-care program for the elderly. The trust fund is currently running annual deficits.
Here’s how the CBO works: it can ONLY analyze the figures given to it by the administration. That’s it. It can’t incorporate outside figures into the tally – even if it knows the equation is totally baseless.
To see how the CBO actually tallies figures in video form, click here.
(Hat tip: listener Michael)
