Democrats Vote To Keep Health Care Gimmick In Place

Tweet

Written By:

Dec 17, 2009
9:48am

Democrats have been claiming that their health care bill won’t add to budget deficits by using accounting gimmicks. Using just a 10 year window to calculate costs, the Democrats start collecting revenues for their new health care bill with immediate tax hikes but don’t actually start paying out on those benefits until several years into the bill.
Meaning that within a 10 year window there are no deficits. Because the deficits incurred once benefits begin to be paid out are covered by the revenues collected when no benefits were paid.
Honest people wouldn’t use a gimmick like this to hide the true cost of this bill from the American public. Sadly, there aren’t many honest people in the Senate. Via an email press release from the GOP:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) once again voted to kill an amendment that would have stopped the massive taxes incurred under President Obama’s government-run health care bill until the actual benefits begin.
While the Democrats claim that their bill is deficit neutral over the ten-year budget window, they achieve this only through a budget gimmick that doesn’t start the most expensive coverage provisions until 2014, but would start the taxes in less than 30 days.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Americans will have paid $71.9 billion in new taxes through 2013 under the Obama bill – nearly $600 per household – before any of the coverage even begins.

For North Dakotans, Senator Kent “Deficit Hawk” Conrad also voted this amendment down.