Democrats have still not released their latest health care bill and its CBO score, because they didn’t like the CBO score it got:
House Democratic leaders are still struggling to produce a final health care overhaul bill at an acceptable official cost estimate, but Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday they continue to plan a final vote this week. House leaders were to huddle late Tuesday afternoon, following a noon session of the full Democratic Caucus. There were reports they are having trouble drafting a bill that meets their budgetary targets….
Rank-and-file Democrats did not talk about the details, but said that the CBO scores had come up short. “They were less than expected” in terms of deficit reduction, said Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, who plans to vote for the bill.
Not only are the Democrats tossing aside their promise of transparency in the health care negotiations, they aren’t even letting us see the bills they send to the CBO. Oh well, I suppose it’s passé to complain about the lack of transparency at this point.
The article has some more interesting details. The reconciliation instructions require that the reconciliation bill come out even in the budget (strictly speaking, it has to reduce the deficit by $1 billion, but that’s nothing these days). Their problem is that most of the changes they want to make to the Senate bill cost money, which they need to recoup somehow or they can’t use reconciliation.
Another interesting tidbit: they’ve decided to combine the health care nationalization bill with the student loan nationalization bill. That gives them another source of savings they can tap: student loans. Will Democrats decide to raid student loans (in a bill that is supposed to improve them) in order to get the number they need to overcome procedural obstacles to health care nationalization? I wouldn’t bet against it.
(Via the Corner.)
Internet Scofflaw 