The National Debt - from the CBO - via Wall Street Journal "Debt Rise Colors Budget Talks"
From The Hill –“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated Tuesday that healthcare reform will cost about $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years — a slight increase since last August, when budget analysts did not include projected costs for 2023. While the law's price tag remained virtually the same, the nonpartisan budget office added to past projections of the number of future exchange and Medicaid enrollees. The CBO also predicted that seven million people will lose employer-based coverage because of the healthcare law.”.
According to the CBO: Employers will be more likely to pay the penalty for not providing mandated health care, rather than pay the higher price of the health care program. In addition, the office estimates that unemployment will remain high – at 7.5% -through 2014, or the highest extended unemployment rate in 70 years (CBO). Driven by the national debt and current laws, the debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) will rise above 77% in the period leading up to 2023.
On the Affordable Health Care Act (Obama Care) the CBO (See PDF) projects the uninsured to remain relatively the same throughout the period of 2013 to 2023, ranging from 58 million to 56 million Americans. while the projected cost of the program has been adjusted upward to 1.3 trillion dollars.
To read the entire document: (in PDF) - visit: http://www.cbo.gov
What this report tells the average American: the result of runaway spending in Washington, and an increasing debt as a result, coupled with laws that, not only are expensive but ineffective, will keep unemployment high, and force millions of those currently holding private insurance off that program, while the total uninsured in millions is expected to remain the same for the next ten years, yet somehow add to the debt that each taxpayer owes. Once again, the Congressional Budget Office is an arm of the U.S. government that is non-partisan. One must understand that no one party owns the debt which has accumulated, however, it is the responsibility of both major political parties and those representatives (who are party affiliates) that the people send to the Congress, the Senate and the White House to cut spending, get out of bed with the lobbyists, and use a common sense, business (or for that matter household) approach to managing the government and the monies it spends on the taxpayers behalf.
Perhaps that is why, the nation’s capitol and those who are sent to do the peoples bidding, live in what is the wealthiest city in the country –power and money trump the general good of the nation.
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Note on reference, it is odd when one finds two strange bedfellows (New York Times and Fox News) in agreement.
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