With the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the Senate Finance Committee’s health-care bill, it is now officially silly season. Speculation is running rampant, including some truly goofy theories. But Steven Benen has a level-head:
I’ll have more in the morning, but in the meantime, the key takeaway from the CBO report is straightforward enough: it moves the process forward. If the CBO had released a report trashing the Baucus bill — higher than expected costs, lower than expected savings — the result would have been quite a bit of chaos on the Hill.
This afternoon’s report keeps the ball rolling in the right direction.
Baucus’s goal was to produce a bill that doesn’t increase the deficit, costs less than $900 billion over the next ten years, and that bends the cost curve of medical spending. He did that, and the bill should pass through his committee for no other reason than it will allow someone other than Baucus to work on this legislation.
It’s nice to see that Bob Dole is solidly behind health care reform and is out there mocking Mitch McConnell for running a Party of No. Rumors that the Republicans are preparing to cave and set their members free to vote for it are encouraging. But it’s all talk right now.
What I expect is that the momentum will continue to build for a robust public option because that is what the president campaigned on and has said he wanted all along. If it comes with an opt-out for the states, I doubt any of them will act on it. That will probably be a compromise without any consequence.
I can live with that.