Today’s under-the-radar assault on America
by digby
After eight years of bashing Obamacare, congressional Republicans still haven’t come up with a plan to replace it. They are, however, essentially unified in wanting to stop the Congressional Budget Office from estimating how much a repeal might cost.
While the media and most Democrats were focusing on the House of Representatives voting to weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics (a measure that was subsequently retracted), the larger document that the initiative was part of also prohibited the office from analyzing proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Almost no one seems to have noticed this.
Responding to the provision on the floor of the House on Jan. 3, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., condemned it and the Republicans:
“They’re admitting in their own rules that their proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act will be devastating to the federal deficit and the national debt,” he said.
Two representatives for House Speaker Paul Ryan did not respond when contacted by Salon asking about the Congressional Budget Office restriction.
Buried on page 25 of the “Rules of the House of Representatives” is language instructing the budget office, a nonpartisan accounting research agency controlled by both houses, to automatically perform estimates on any piece of legislation that might increase federal spending by more than $5 billion over the next 40 years.
That’s very fine-grained analysis, considering that the federal government spends just under $4 trillion a year. Assuming a static amount of $3.85 trillion is spent annually over the next 40 years (a generous assumption), this means the House GOP is interested in a detailed analysis of spending down to the nearest 0.003 percent.
That’s an incredible attention to detail that House Republicans are asking for, but there’s one significant exception to the CBO requirements. Under the House rules, which passed on a party-line vote without any Democrats in favor, the budget office is prohibited from analyzing “any bill or joint resolution” that repeals or modifies Obamacare.
This prohibition probably reflects that Republicans have come to grips with the fact that several provisions within the massive health care law have reduced the federal deficit, thanks to tax increases or payment restrictions on Medicare providers.
According to an analysis produced by the budget office in June, repealing Obamacare would increase the federal budget deficit by about $137 billion over the next 10 years. Using another method of calculation, the repeal would add $353 billion.
They do not care about deficits. But they’d prefer to keep it on the down low so they can bash Democrats with it when it’s necessary.
This is not the fundamental reason to oppose them on this issue, of course. They are trying to kill and or bankrupt some of their fellow citizens by throwing us back into the heinous health care market that existed before Obamacare. But they’re clearly trying to hide what they are doing and there’s so much going on that they know they can get away with it.
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