Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Obamacare: selling the unsellable

The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that Obamacare will cost over a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000). This isn't good news for something that is supposed to save us money and "bend the cost curve down." In response, the rhetoric has changed from emphasizing the money that will be saved to claims that the reform will be "revenue neutral." This isn't good news either, as we are learning that keeping it revenue neutral will require enormous tax increases, not to mention that "revenue neutral" means staying on the same "unsustainable path" that was given as a reason to enact reform in the first place.

I expect the next phase of the evolving attempt to sell Obamacare to be the claim that we need to spend crippling amounts of money now so that we can save money down the road. This is a tough sell in a struggling economy, but it has the virtue of kicking accountability down the road until Obama is out of office. By the time it becomes apparent that long term costs have actually increased due to government overstepping, Obama won't be around to take the blame.

But anyone paying attention doesn't have to wait 10 years to discover that Obamacare is a sham. The CBO's report flatly states that "the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window."

This thing deserves to go up in flames.

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