• February 13, 2012

CBO

John Boehner’s tear-soaked budget deal was said to make $38 billion in cuts and SAVED US FROM SHUTDOWN (not that anyone in America who’s not paid by the federal government cared), but it turns out, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that number’s far off. This year, the CBO says those budget maneuvers will only [...]

HERE YOU GO: The ABSOLUTELY TRUE (completely arbitrary) conventional wisdom regarding the CBO’s scoring of Harry Reid’s Senate health care bill has been that it needs to come in at less than $900 billion, or the entire reform effort would collapse, and Trig’s army would finally seize its opportunity cross the Rubicon. The report’s coming [...]

JUST A LITTLE ONE-SENTENCE REMINDER ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM FACING AMERICA FOREVER: We award nine million “succinctness points” to beloved CBO director Doug Elmendorf: “The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people [...]

Your 2009 World Series will feature the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, two popular Northeast athletics organizations. USA! [New York Times] Baghdad had another suicide bombing: 132 people died, which is the most all at once since 2007. [Washington Post] The new new new health care bill will be submitted to the CBO [...]

You may have noticed by now that your editor has a serious obsession with old dingbat Chuck Grassley and finds everything he does hilarious; sorry if you do not feel the same way. But just look at this guy! What IS it? Something to do with the fact that this barking, illiterate curmudgeon, who sleeps [...]

(YOUR CO-OPS ARE LAME): Hey Doug Elmendorf of the CBO, how are those proposed co-ops — the non-profit alternative to Pubic Options — in the Baucus Bill going to work? Oh you just want to tell us in a parenthetical aside within your official scoring report? “(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the [...]

You know that oft-repeated line about how Social Security will be screwed when the Boomers all get old at the same time? Well according to this graph from the CBO, we crossed that threshold into “screwed” territory right around, say, 10:36 this morning. You know what would be a great way to solve this? Taxing [...]

Ouch times a billion! The heroic Congressional Budget Office has gone through the sexy new health care bills from the House and Senate and, because he is racist against Obama, has determined that neither comes close to doing what they need to do: Bending The Cost Curve down, in the long run, to save the [...]

Sorry, Denby, but your boyfriend Ted Kennedy has written the most awful piece of proposed legislation since Mitch McConnell suggested ending state funding for robotic goat-dildoes back in the Gingrich Revolution. What is so terrible about Kennedy’s healthcare proposal? The Congressional Budget Office NO LIKEY.