If you walk into a bar and tell someone that we can spend a trillion dollars and cover thirty million uninsured Americans and the effect on the budget will be to save $1.3 trillion over the next twenty years, you’ll probably get told that you’re crazy, But that’s exactly what the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the health care bill will do. According to DCCC chair, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, those numbers mean that the health care bill is the biggest deficit reduction bill since Bill Clinton’s 1993 Economic Plan. That bill, known as the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, didn’t win a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate. In fact, the Senate vote was 50-50 and vice-president Al Gore cast the deciding vote. Notice, also, that it was a budget reconciliation bill, which is why it could pass with only 51 votes.
The people you meet in that bar might not believe that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are the two presidents to enact major budget reduction legislation, or that the Democrats have a good record on budgets while, despite their rhetoric and branding, the Republicans have a disastrous record. They might not believe the CBO numbers because they can’t imagine that it will save money to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to the uninsured. But that is how screwed our health care system is. And that’s why it’s so important that we reform it.
