On the recordMarch 12, 2012
Of course, that is only the first promise. I have a couple more. The administration also famously said this health care law would not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the original projections were that it would save $143 billion in the first 10 years. Well, thankfully, the administration has recognized that the CLASS Act was, as Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad said, a Ponzi scheme. It was simply not financially workable. So they are not implementing it. Because they are not implementing it, they are not going to get $86 billion worth of revenue, so that will eat away at that $143 billion of deficit reduction. Of course, a couple of weeks ago when President Obama presented his fiscal year 2013 budget, included in that budget was a $111 billion request--or I guess cost estimate--on the mandatory spending of the health care exchanges. If you add the $111 billion to the $86 billion, that gives you $197 billion of reduced deficit reduction, if that makes sense. So bottom line here is I think that is broken promise No. 2. I do not believe that in the first 10 years, this thing will actually reduce the deficit. And it is far worse than that. These are the small numbers. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the revisions that will be occurring when we actually start finding out what the true cost of the health care law is.
