The Debt Ceiling and ObamaCare

Steve McCann

The recently concluded debt ceiling debate was celebrated by the participants as a major breakthrough in putting the United States on the road toward solving the deficit and debt problems extant for as far as the eye can see.  The country was told that by their hard work the leaders of Congress had given birth to "saving" $2.1 to 2.4 Trillion over the next ten years.  Since this savings exists in the theoretical "Alice in Wonderland" world of federal budgeting, the reduction is far from what it seems.

Among the items off the table was ObamaCare.  The Congressional Budget Office, which produced the projection that are the basis of the debt ceiling "savings," is still using in its calculations the same set of numbers they revealed in March of 2010 as the cost of ObamaCare.  However the facts have changed as each month passes and the truth emerges. 

Nancy Pelosi will forever hold a place of ignominy in the annals of political quotations when she said in reference to the passage of ObamaCare: "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it."  Virtually every week another lie or obfuscation slithers out of the nearly 2,400 pages of an incomprehensible bill that was passed with the full panoply of corruption and sleaze.

This Bill is the epitome of the end justifying the means mindset of those in power in Washington from January 2009 through January 2011; perhaps the most malicious and dishonest governing class in the history of the country.

The latest per the Investor's Business Daily is the exposure of another cost never revealed to the American public. 

The latest cost overrun associated with ObamaCare?  A $500 Billion "error" associated with insuring the spouses and children of new entitlement recipients.  That's $500 Billion in additional deficit spending-although it didn't stem from an "error" as much as it was the result of a deliberate miscalculation.

As it attempted to calculate ObamaCare's true fiscal impact, the Congressional Budget Office was explicitly instructed to ignore the cost of covering family members under new eligibility requirements for low-income private sector employees.

"The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this (because) they were told to do their modeling on single coverage."  Researcher Richard Burkhauser told the Daily Caller this month.

Documents obtained from the Democratic controlled Joint Committee onTaxation confirm Burkhauser's account-and demonstrate the lengths to which Obama supporters went in an effort to hide these costs from taxpayers.

Obviously this isn't the first "oversight" associated with this unconstitutional abomination.  In March 2011, Obama's health care czarina Kathleen Sebelius was forced to acknowledge under oath that the government double counted $529 Billion in "savings" associated with the implementation of the legislation.

In addition to this over $1 Trillion in "errors" there have other costs revealed, such as a $54 Billion raid on Social Security and a $72 Billion repayment obligation associated with a new long-term health care fund.   The total to date, and still counting, is $1.155 Trillion in deficit spending unaccounted for in all the projections.  When the CBO released its estimate of the cost of ObamaCare in March of 2010 they claimed the program would add only $109 Billion to the deficit.  The net effect, including the CBO original estimate: $1.3 Trillion in deficit spending.

This wipes out half of the supposed savings agreed in the debt ceiling negotiations, that is if one assumes these reductions would have ever come to pass.

As a further reminder of the folly and malfeasance that was the passage of ObamaCare: the official projections factor in 10 years of tax increases and deficit spending and only six years of benefits.  That discrepancy enormously understates the long-term impact of ObamaCare and adds Trillions to the deficit not addressed by the "grand bargain" on August 1^st of this year.

Is there any question as to why S&P downgraded the creditworthiness of the United States?  It is apparent that truth is an orphan on Pennsylvania Avenue and the kabuki theater associated with the rise in the debt ceiling as well as the so-called super-committee tasked with finding the "savings" is meaningless as long as this cast in the White House and the Senate is on center stage.

500 Billion New Reasons To Invalidate ObamaCare

By HOWARD RICH 

Many of these tax hikes have already been implemented — siphoning money away from our economy at the worst possible time. They're also being collected even after a federal judge struck down ObamaCare in its entirety.

Also — and this is a critical point — the official cost projections for ObamaCare factor in a decade's worth of tax hikes and deficit spending and only six years of programmatic "benefits." Obviously, that discrepancy vastly understates the long-term impact of ObamaCare on federal deficits.

During the recent debt-ceiling debate, Republican leaders proved unwilling to make major inroads in reducing the federal government's mushrooming debt. They also abandoned key long-term fiscal restraints aimed at lowering future deficits.

As a new "supercommittee" convenes to take another stab at these long-overdue reforms, it's clear that gutting ObamaCare must be its first order of business.