CBO Gives Obama's "American JOBS Act" Thumbs Up! De Facto Endorsement! Tells Congress: "Spend Money Now!"

CBO To Congress: Spend money now!

As Congressional Budget Office director, Doug Elmendorf doesn’t advocate for specific policy proposals. Rather, his office tells Congress how much the policies that they decide on will cost.

But during his testimony in front of the “supercommittee” this morning, Elmendorf came awfully close to pushing Congress to support stimulus spending as part of its deficit reduction charge.

“Credible policy changes that would substantially reduce deficits late in the coming decade and over the long term, without immediate cuts in spending or increases in taxes, would support the economic expansion in the next few years and strengthen the economy over the longer term,” Elmendorf said at the hearing. “There is no inherent contradiction between using fiscal policy to support the economy today, while the unemployment rate is high ... and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.”

This could be a difficult policy for the supercommittee to follow through on. The 12-member panel’s charge is to find $1.2 trillion in cuts; making space for increased government spending is a challenge in that context.

But Elmendorf made the case that it’s the best approach. “If policymakers wanted to achieve both a short-term economic boost and medium-term and long-term fiscal sustainability, a combination of policies would be required: changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit now but reduce it later in the decade,” he said.

Elmendorf did caution, however, that such an approach would need a good amount of political will behind it. It would need to be “sufficiently specific and widely supported” so that individuals and businesses would have confidence in the changes. There needs to be a belief on the part of the public, he urged, that “future fiscal restraint would truly take effect.” With public levels of confidence in Congress at all-time lows, finding faith that the body will act may be nearly as challenging as finding the funding for stimulus in the first place.









CBO Chief Gives De Facto Boost To Obama Jobs Plan

The Congressional Budget Office would be stepping out of bounds if it endorsed specific legislation or even hazy policy objectives. But it's hard to read CBO chief Doug Elmendorf's testimony to the joint deficit Super Committee Tuesday as anything other than a de facto endorsement of President Obama's broad strategy to boost the economy: legislation that spends money to hire people and reduces payroll taxes in the near-term, and that reduces deficits by even greater amounts in the middle and end of the decade.

"If policymakers want to achieve both a short-term economic boost and long-term fiscal sustainability the combination of policies that would be most effective according to our analysis would be changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit today, but narrow it in the coming decade," Elmendorf told the panel's 12 Democrats and Republicans. "The combination of fiscal policies that would be most effective would be policies that cut taxes or increase spending in the near-term, but over the medium and longer-term move in the opposite direction."

This is a generalized version of precisely what President Obama is proposing -- a $447 billion jobs bill that will increase spending on hiring programs, and reduce payroll taxes; accompanied by deficit reduction measures that take effect in 2013, to more than cover the cost of the jobs bill.

But Elmendorf went even further, under questioning he ranked various tax cuts by their stimulative impact, and payroll tax cuts, benefitting employers and employees topped the list.

Many Republicans are resistant to the idea of using the joint committee as a vehicle to pass or pay for Obama's jobs bill, a significant chunk of which they oppose. But the legislation is written in such a way that -- if it passes -- it will count any extra savings that the committee finds toward the cost of its bill. And at a Tuesday press conference House Speaker John Boehner encouraged the committee to go well beyond its statutory requirement of finding $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Combined with the fact that the White House is now signaling that President Obama would sign piecemeal elements of his jobs plan, it's feasible that this could be a path to passing at least some additional expansionary policies this year.


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Sources: AP, TPM, Washington Post, White House, Youtube, Google Maps

Total Cost Of New Health Care Law Will Exceed $1 Trillion

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Sources: MSNBC, C-Span, Youtube

Senate Reconciliation Bill Passes 56 To 43! Its Officially The Law!

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Reconciliation Bill Passes Senate


The Senate approved a package of fixes to the health care reform law Thursday, drawing to a close the chamber’s year-long effort to overhaul the nation’s insurance system.

But the work isn't done quite yet.

The bill passed 56 to 43, with Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the chamber. Senate Republicans forced a pair of changes to the reconciliation bill overnight, sending it back to the House for a final vote later Thursday.

Democrats believe the minor changes – to language regarding Pell Grants for low-income students – won’t derail House passage, meaning that Democrats are set to finally conclude the legislative struggle needed to make health reform a reality.

"We all made history," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told a group of Democrats on the floor, as they celebrated the vote. "We could do nothing else."

Three moderate Democrats voted against the reconciliation bill – Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and the two senators from Arkansas, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln faces a tough re-election fight this fall. Republican Johnny Isakson of Georgia is ill and wasn’t in the chamber.

No Republicans voted for the reconciliation bill, just as no Republican voted for the underlying health reform law. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized the the measure until the end, saying, “It is the most unsavory sausage-making, Chicago-style bill I have ever seen."

He said the GOP mantra would be to “repeal and replace” the bill going forward. "We can't just have the status quo," McCain said.

The vote came as President Barack Obama took the stage in Iowa City, Iowa – his first stop since he signed the legislation Tuesday – hoping to promote the bill to the American public, which polls show is deeply skeptical of reform. He told Republicans he welcomed the chance to debate them on the merits of the plan, particularly if they insist on pressing for a repeal of the law.

"My attitude is: Go for it," Obama said. "If these congressmen in Washington want to come here in Iowa and tell small-business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest."

The reconciliation bill makes a variety of fixes to the health reform legislation, which passed Sunday night in the House. It removed controversial deals like the Cornhusker Kickback and also pushes off implementation of an excise tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health plans until 2018.

The final vote on reconciliation in the Senate came with little drama – but it followed weeks of tough negotiations between House and Senate Democrats over what should be in it, and whether there would be the votes to pass it.

The top leaders in the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and his counterpart, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, worked out a deal in the early morning hours Thursday to hold the vote at 2 p.m. – and it went off on time, with the final outcome not in doubt.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), the longest-serving senator, was wheeled into the chamber by an aide and shook hands with Reid before going to his place and waiting for his name to be called in the roll. There was a humorous moment when Reid's name was called and he said 'no,' before quickly correcting himself. He made the same mistake when the Senate voted on the overall health reform vote, on Christmas Eve. The chamber broke out in laughter.

Senate Republicans found two rules violations in the section of the bill on student loan reform, and Democrats were forced to strike 16 lines of language dealing with Pell Grants.

The House has already passed the reconciliation bill, on Sunday night when it approved the landmark health reform measure. But since the House and Senate must pass identical versions of the reconciliation bill to put the fixes into law, the reconciliation piece must go back to the House for a second vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said her members would approve the package of changes later Thursday and send the measure onto the president.

"Of all the things they could send back, this is the most benign and easily fixed,' Pelosi told reporters Thursday.

The legislative path that brought the Senate to Thursday’s vote was tortuous and politically risky.

The Senate spent months trying to write a bill that could win 60 votes. Democrats succeeded on Christmas Eve, only to lose their filibuster-proof majority a month later.

The White House and congressional leaders revived the bill after deciding on a two-step process – the House passing the Senate bill, followed by both chambers using fast-track rules known as reconciliation to pass a package of fixes. This was the only way House members would agree to approve the Senate bill, and the only way the Senate could make changes that the House wanted.

Reconciliation was fraught with challenges. But Democrats successfully scrubbed the bill of any potential procedural landmines, preventing Republicans from stripping out any major policy pieces that would have endangered its passage in the House or the Senate.

Democrats also held together during the more than 13 hours of amendments, turning each one back. While Republicans implored their colleagues to make changes, Democrats argued that any changes would send the bill back to the House for another vote, an outcome they worked mightily to avoid before the parliamentarian's ruling early Thursday. That meant Democrats had to vote against such campaign ad fodder as a provision barring sex offenders from being given Viagra.

Once Republicans struck two minor provisions from the bill, sending it back to the House, some liberals suggested that Democrats had one last chance to fight for the public option. But no senators took the bait.

Democrats insisted on keeping the bill as clean as possible so the House can give the measure swift approval – and that the party can be done with the health care debate once and for all.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a leading proponent of a public option, shook his head Thursday morning when asked whether he’d offer the proposal as an amendment to the reconciliation bill.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said: “Everybody feels committed, feels we’ve done the right thing, knows that the things that are required to go back to the House are insignificant and the House has already told us, ‘No problem.’ So we don’t want to change that.”

The drama playing on the Senate floor eventually became a battle of wills between Republicans and Democrats, with each side trying to outlast the other.

Reid finally adjourned the marathon session at about 2:45 a.m. Thursday after striking a deal with McConnell to reconvene later in the morning -- news that was greeted with audible sighs of relief from tired senators.

By the time senators filtered into the chamber Thursday afternoon, the final vote felt almost anticlimactic to Democrats who had expended so much energy to get to that point.

Not only had the comprehensive bill already passed the House with fanfare Sunday night, the fixes package still needed to go back to the House, robbing Senate Democrats of their moment to close the book on health care.


Sources: MSNBC, Politico

Gregg & Orszag Face-Off Over Obama's 2011 Budget

Senator Grills White House Budget Director




Sources: CNN

GOP Challenges Dems On CBO Corrections, Senate Vote Monday

GOP Pounces On CBO Correction


The Congressional Budget Office issued additional information and a correction of its cost estimates today that have Senate Republicans calling for Democrats to slow action on the health reform bill to give officials a chance to digest the data.

CBO director Doug Elmendorf said that in the second decade the legislation would not cut the deficit as much as originally predicted. On his blog, he wrote: "The correction reduces the degree to which the legislation would lower federal deficits in the decade after 2019."

A CBO staffer also sent an email to Republican and Democratic leadership and key committees saying that the Medicaid funding deals included in the bill for Nebraska, Vermont and Massachusetts would cost $1.2 billion over the next decade. Because each state's deal was structured differently, it is unclear how the $1.2 billion breaks down for each state.

A spokesman for Patrick Leahy said the senator's home state of Vermont expects to receive $250 million more in Medicaid funding over the course of the six-year deal, which Leahy engineered.

Yesterday, Democratic aides estimated that the Medicaid deal for Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson's home state of Nebraska, which ensures the federal government picks up the tab for any new Medicaid beneficiaries added to state rolls under the bill, would cost about $45 million over the first decade.

“CBO typically issues additional information, corrections, clarifications and revisions following any big analysis release. In fact, five days after Reid’s merger was released, CBO was still releasing additional information and clarifications," said a Republican Senate leadership aide. "It's another reason why Congress shouldn’t rush to jam this vote in the dead of night.”

The Democrats are scheduled to take their first vote on the health care bill at 1 a.m. Monday.




CBO Issues Correction: Health bill Nixes Deficit Less Than Thought


The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) corrected its estimate of the Senate health bill's costs on Sunday, saying it would reduce deficits slightly less than they'd predicted.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said that the nonpartisan budget office had overestimated the extent to which the legislation's new Independent Payment Advisory Board would bring down the deficit.

While the CBO's estimates of the board's and overall bill's impact in its first 10 years of the legislation are correct, Elmendorf wrote, the program's effects on deficit reduction during the second decade of the program were overestimated.

"CBO expects that the legislation, if enacted, would reduce federal budget deficits over the decade after 2019 relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP," Elmendorf said. "In comparison, the extrapolations in the initial estimate implied a reduction in deficits in the 2020–2029 period that would be in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP."

In essence, Elmendorf explained on his Blog:

With this corrected reading, savings from changes to the Medicare program (along with other changes to direct spending that are not associated directly with expanded insurance coverage) would increase at a rate that is between 10 percent and 15 percent per year during the 2020–2029 period, compared with a growth rate of nearly 15 percent reported in the initial estimate.

The error reflects the greater uncertainty the CBO has about the bill's effects in its second decade, the director said, but said that the correction represents a "small share" of the expected deficit reductions in the health bill. Elmendorf also said that the amended version of the bill released on Saturday would still go further to reduce deficits than the initial version of the legislation had.


Sources: The Hill, Politico, CBO

Public Option Covers Only 2 Percent Of Uninsured?? CBO Weighs In

Cracks in the Public Option

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(What does Pres. Obama really want in the Health Care Bill?)

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(Was a weak Public Option doomed to fail?)

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(Boehner outlines GOP's health care plan. In the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, says that the Democrats "recklessly pursue" a government takeover of the health care system and offers his party's alternative.)

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Sources: MSNBC, The Ed Show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann

CBO Health Care Reform Figures Not Precise, Just "Guesstimates"

(Public option hanging in the balance. Among the key issues to be debated in the coming days: whether a government-run plan will be included in a final Senate version of the health care bill.)

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(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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In health debate, those numbers are just numbers


Phil Ellis may be the most powerful guy you've never heard of in the health-care debate. A senior analyst with the Congressional Budget Office, Ellis is the man who has to decide what it would cost to rebuild the health insurance system. He has essentially condemned two legislative proposals by slapping them with trillion-dollar price tags. A third plan rocketed to prominence after he said it would cost much less.

In the coming weeks, Ellis's judgments will shape the fate of President Obama's reform effort. But Ellis, an amiable father of three who hasn't had a day off in about six months, is the first to admit that his painstaking numbers are almost certainly wrong.

"We're always putting out these estimates: This is going to cost $1.042 trillion exactly," he said. "But you sort of want to add, you know, 'Your mileage may vary.' "

As Democrats embark on a plan to reorder one-sixth of the U.S. economy, the CBO is the umpire, charged by Congress with assessing the effect on the federal budget and the potentially profound impact on American lives. The Senate majority leader has vowed to hold no vote on a health plan until the CBO passes judgment. But the agency, while almost universally praised for honest and impartial analyses, does not have a crystal ball.

"Everyone in the process -- especially the CBO -- knows that it is very, very difficult to make these estimates and that they're no more than very educated guesses," said Alice Rivlin, who served as the CBO's founding director in 1975. "But if you didn't have this process, we know that the consequence is that everyone would want to spend money and not pay for it."

Inside the estimates

Much of what the CBO does is akin to trying to forecast your grocery bill in 10 years. First, it establishes a baseline: Your history of spending $200 a week at Safeway projected into the future with adjustments for inflation and expected demographic trends (i.e., more children, larger pets). Then it factors in proposed policy changes: Say you want to eat only organic and enroll your husband in Jenny Craig. Costs for meat, produce and dairy would go up, but spending on toothpaste and Saran Wrap would be unaffected. Meanwhile, the extra $70 a week for diet food would be partially offset by lower spending on Cheetos and frozen pizza.

The CBO has plenty of data to help make such calculations, including projections for inflation and the price of organics. But it would have to make some judgment calls: Is it reasonable to assume that Krispy Kremes are off the table? Or is it safer to budget for a dozen doughnuts once a quarter? And even the most careful estimate can be blindsided: What if the baby you projected to arrive in 2012 turns out to be twins in 2010?

Sometimes the projections are straightforward. If lawmakers want to impose a $6 billion tax on health insurance companies, the CBO -- and its revenue-estimating partner, the Joint Committee on Taxation -- assumes that it will generate $6 billion a year. Other provisions are more complex, and that is Phil Ellis's world.

Ellis heads the CBO's health insurance modeling unit, which examines plans to expand coverage to people who don't have it. The team's primary job is figuring what it would cost the government. But to do that, Ellis and his colleagues have to predict how people and businesses would react to a bewildering array of new economic incentives.

To help with this task, the CBO has constructed a computer model built on a government survey of 70,000 people, who were asked about family structure, health status and insurance options. The data are layered with scholarly research that suggests how those people might respond to various policies. The CBO also has assigned each worker to a "synthetic firm," whose virtual executives also have decisions to make, such as whether to offer insurance to their workers or pay a penalty to the government.

Ellis compares the model to SimCity, a computer game that reacts as players construct a virtual metropolis. Ideas go in (What happens if there's a $750 fine for not having insurance?), and a forecast comes out (Some people would choose to pay it, generating about $1 billion a year for the government.). Each legislative package contains dozens of such provisions, and they interact in infinitely variable ways.

Based on experience

Most of the model's assumptions are based on data from actual experience. The Massachusetts experiment with mandated coverage has been particularly helpful, Ellis said. But where there is no real-world precedent, Ellis and his colleagues just have to noodle it out. "In some cases, we're just going on economic logic and what's in people's self-interest," Ellis said, putting the range of uncertainty at as much as 20 percent.

Running policy through the insurance model is just the beginning. Results are checked with the CBO's Medicaid team and congressional tax analysts, who have their own computer models. Each 10-year cost estimate takes days to produce. With requests from lawmakers pouring in, Ellis and his team have been working practically around the clock to score three dozen coverage packages since April.

The latest numbers were delivered to House leaders last week in a weary late-night e-mail: "Talk to you tomorrow morning -- or is that today," said the missive, which, along with the new estimates, was obtained by The Washington Post (though not from the CBO, the agency wants you to know).

Despite the inherent uncertainty, the CBO takes its numbers very seriously. "With such consequential decisions on the table, we feel the weight of responsibility to provide the best information that we possibly can," said Doug Elmendorf, the agency's director.

Could it do better? Lately, the CBO has come under fire from liberal bloggers and champions of supposedly money-saving ideas, such as disease-prevention programs. Harvard economist David Cutler, a member of the CBO's health advisory panel, has complained that the agency is too cautious in estimating potential savings from changing the way doctors are organized and paid.

That charge is supported by research from Jon Gabel, a senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center, who found that the CBO "substantially underestimated" savings from major health-reform legislation in the past three decades. The example most often cited by CBO critics is the 2003 creation of a Medicare prescription drug benefit, one of the first bills Ellis scored for the CBO. The agency predicted that spending would top $200 billion in the first three years. But, by the CBO's own estimates, Gabel said, actual spending turned out to be 40 percent less because the program attracted fewer people who bought more generics at lower prices than the CBO projected.

The CBO's defenders note, however, that Ellis called it closer than anybody else. At the time, in fact, the CBO was accused of low-balling the drug plan -- particularly after it was revealed that Bush administration actuaries had attached a much higher price to the president's proposal.

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who has advised Obama and the CBO on health care, said the agency should be more transparent about its assumptions so independent analysts can get inside the numbers that "literally are going to make or break this debate." Still, Gruber praised the CBO and Ellis -- one of his best PhD students ever, Gruber said -- for making the best of "an unbelievably hard job."

"Is there something obviously wrong with what they're doing? I don't actually think so," Gruber said. "There are 500 things in that model. They're doing as well as they can on 493 of them, and I might quibble on seven."


Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, NY Times, CBO.gov, Wikipedia

Health Care Reform Bill Gets A Vote Next Tuesday...Senate Finance Committee

(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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Finance Committee To Vote On Health Care Bill On Tuesday

The Senate Finance Committee will vote on its health care reform bill this Tuesday. The news comes after Democrats and chairman Max Baucus got a boost from the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the legislation would require relatively little new spending, while reducing the deficit and bending the health care spending curve downward.


Sources: Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, MSNBC, CBO

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

G.O.P. Using Inconclusive CBO Study To Derail Obama/ Kennedy Health Care Reform Plan....More G.O.P. Fear Mongering

Huffington Post----

On Monday afternoon, critics of a major health care overhaul seized on a report from the Congressional Budget Office showing that a Democratic reform bill could cost $1 trillion over ten years despite adding only 17 million Americans to the ranks of the insured. But the results are incomplete, and they know it.

The CBO findings made for a traditional attack based around fears that the government would spend larges swaths of taxpayer money with minimum systematic change.

"CBO makes it clear -- the Democrats' plan will force millions of Americans to lose the care they have now," Sen. Mike Enzi, the ranking Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, said in a statement. "Anyone who says that if you like the care you have, you can keep it under this bill doesn't have their facts straight."

House Minority Leader John Boehner sent out an email alert on the report, saying the Democrats "costly plan is exposed." His colleague, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, meanwhile said the CBO score card was "troubling when we're trying to save money that we would be calling for that kind of expenditure."

The CBO's findings, however, are for an incomplete piece of legislation, making the cost-per-coverage estimates much worse than they will ultimately be. Republicans on the committee knew this, according to Democrats. But they pushed for the bill to be studied by the CBO now. And when poor results came back, they ran with them.

"The reality is there are still some outstanding issues, including employer responsibility and a public insurance option," said a Democratic aide to a committee member. "Those are two outstanding issues. So what we did in a good faith effort to find bipartisan consensus, we did not include those elements because we are trying to find common ground. But Republicans wanted there to be a score even though, the reality is, if there is an incomplete bill you will have an incomplete statement."

Another Democratic aide to the HELP Committee member concurred, adding that Sen. Ted Kennedy's office, in an effort to "find bipartisan consensus with Republicans colleagues" filed the bill and allowed it to be scored by the CBO -- not expecting it to be used as partisan fodder.

Asked about these complaints, Enzi's spokesman Mike Mahaffey called his boss' statement "absolutely fair."

"This is a report from the CBO saying that it is going to cost a trillion dollars and it is only going to ensure net increase of 17 million patients," he added. "We are not the ones that scheduled a Wednesday markup before the bill is complete and the CBO report is complete."

Democrats both inside and out of government, while cognizant that the CBO's findings did not fully reflect the final bill, were nevertheless distraught that the numbers were now out in the public sphere.

"My impression was that for all the lawyers around, they didn't follow the first principle which is don't ask the question you don't know the answer to," said one high-ranking Hill aide.

Indeed, in private, White House officials were shaking their head at the development. Publicly, press secretary Robert Gibbs sought to distance the president from the legislation. In a statement after the CBO report release, he said, "this is not the Administration's bill."

The CBO's findings do create politically bad optics. In the end, however, the situation could be remedied when a full analysis is released sometime in the next week. Once the bill is scored with a stronger individual and/or employer mandate for coverage, as well as various other details, HELP Committee members fully expect the cost-per-coverage breakdown to improve significantly. For now, progressive activists in the health care debate are holding their breath, hoping that the next CBO findings have more resonance.

"If this was a true reflection of the bill, it would be bad," said one operative. "But it's not -- it's more like they graded a test halfway through the testing period. HELP is rushing language back to them and are hoping for new projections (that include employer and individual mandate) by Friday. That's pretty pie in the sky, I fear. They will revise it though."


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Sources: Huffington Post, The Hill, CIO.com, Wikipedia, Google Maps