Political Quotes

“I will add one more thought to the costs, and I have looked at this very carefully. On December 23, the night before the bill passed, I got a letter back from the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, who also had stated it would create a surplus in the bill of $143 billion based on conventional accounting procedures. I asked him: Were they not double counting the money, about $400 billion? Were they not double counting it, counting it as income to Medicare and counting it as money available to fund the bill here, President Obama's ObamaCare? Weren't they using the money twice? Think about that. Here we are on the eve of a vote, December 23, the vote is tomorrow morning, December 24, and we are not agreed on whether the money is being double counted. He wrote back and said it is being double counted, ``although the conventions of accounting might suggest otherwise.'' The way they scored this bill was carefully done by experts to get the score they got, that it would make a surplus of $140 billion. But the money was Medicare money. They raised taxes for Medicare. They cut costs for Medicare. It created some money in Medicare, but the money was borrowed by the U.S. Treasury and spent on this new program. The money is owed to the Medicare trustees, who are trustees by law. They are holding debt instruments from the United States. But because it is an internal debt, it doesn't score. That may seem complicated, but it is not. Trust me, they borrowed this money.…”