A bit of honesty today from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D, Mont., regarding the tricks used to make the health care bill appear deficit-neutral:
“Health care reform, whether you use a ten-year number or when you start in 2010 or start in 2014, wherever you start at, so it is still either $1 trillion or it’s $2.5 Trillion, depending on where you start…”
This is an important point. The health care bill costs $2.5 trillion over ten years if you count from the year when it started.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Coburn, R, Okla., has filed an amendment to strip from the bill the $300 million “pork-bribe” that got Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., to cast the needed 60th vote to proceed to debate on the bill.
The amendment is only three words long — “Strike section 2006” — but it could be hazardous to some senators’ health if it ever receives a floor vote. John Hart, his spokesman, released a statement that “Dr. Coburn believes it’s immoral for the Reid bill to cut Medicare benefits for seniors while financing special-interest, pork-barrel projects for vulnerable incumbents.”
