CBO Scores $829 Bil!..Bob Dole Says Health Care Reform Bill Will Pass

(CBO Scores! The congressional budget office releases an $829 billion cost estimate for the healthcare bill put forward by Sen. Max Baucus. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.)

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(A recent Poll indicates that constituents are in a 40-40 split as it relates to widespread support for this much needed legislation. The $64 billion dollar question remains is will this bill be passed with a robust, not watered down Public Option?)

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(GOP lobbies for health care reform. A Morning Meeting panel including Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., discusses whether Republicans will now get more involved in the health care reform process once the Baucus bill makes its way out of the Senate.)

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CBO estimate on amended Baucus bill: $829 Billion and will reduce the National Deficit by more than $80 Billion!!


The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the amended Baucus bill will cost $829 billion over 10 years. The CBO estimated the original bill would cost $774 billion over the next decade.

With a cost below the president's $900 billion target, the CBO estimate smooths the bill's path to passage out of the Finance Committee. Still, the committee process is not quite finished. Baucus has promised lawmakers time to review the bill and they could still raise issues and ask for amendments before the bill is voted on.

On the Senate floor, Baucus calls the CBO report "good news" and says the bill remains fully paid for and reduces the federal deficit by $81 billion.



Bob Dole: Health Care Will Pass, GOP Should Get On Board


Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) told a group of local Kansas reporters on Wednesday, that opposition to the president's health care package had been driven by knee-jerk partisanship and urged Congressional Republicans to get on board a version of reform.

The 1996 Republican presidential candidate also predicted, following a speech at a health care reform summit in Kansas, that "there will be a signing ceremony" for a reform bill sometime this year or early in 2010.

But the comments that seem likely to create the most ripples were those that dealt with congressional opposition to the White House. Dole, according to reports, framed the pushback to Pres. Barack Obama's reform agenda as almost perfunctory in nature.

"Sometimes people fight you just to fight you," he said, according to The Kansas City Star. "They don't want Reagan to get it, they don't want Obama to get it, so we've got to kill it...

"Health care is one of those things," he added. "Now we've got to do something."

Dole said he did not know what a final health care bill would look like, even though he was confident it would make it to the president's desk. His lament of the partisanship surrounding the health care debate, he hinted, came from going through a similarly taxing experience during the early years of the Clinton administration.

Discussing the failure to get a health care reform passed in 1993 and 1994, he said politics -- both from Congress and the White House -- was to blame. "Politics took over," he said. "And you lost."



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Sources: MSNBC, Huffington Post, Politico, AP, Google Maps