New (7-17) CBO scoring of the Tri-Committee Bill

by Bruce Webb

h/t to dKos poster Pronin2.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10464/hr3200.pdf

New scoring released Friday night shows the ten-year net increase to the deficit from the House Tri-Committee bill down to $239 billion with an actual five year surplus of $44 billion. I guess we will have to see whether the AP and the Republicans cling to that $1.5 trillion figure or not. And to be fair while the Press Release of the Committee claims CBO scored this actually as a 10 year surplus of $6 billion this was just accomplished by setting the $245 billion it will take to fix Medicare aside on the basis that that will be the result of separate legislation. This seems to be a dodge to me, I prefer to just stick with the numbers as they show in the table.

Either way ($239 billion 10 year deficit or $6 billion 10 year surplus) it gets harder for people to claim that covering 97% of Americans with health insurance is just too heavy a lift.

UPDATE: Hoo boy, this set off multiple hissy fits at dKos with competing diaries and claims of hoaxing to the point that both Pronin2’s and Dartagnan’s diaries got taken down. Bottom line?
1) The original ‘Press Release’ does not seem to have actually been officially released. The latest official release on HR3200 seems to be this: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/News.asp?FormMode=release&ID=918 It does not claim a surplus but does say the ultimate result will be paid for.
2) This morning the CBO Director’s Blog was updated with this: http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=332

As noted above I would not have run with the $6 billion surplus of that purported Press Release and would have just stuck with the official CBO score, but the number just didn’t come out of nowhere. I suspect that someone drafted up a Press Release that never actually went out because it was mis-leading. Anyway the $239 billion 10 year number stands.