Doug Elmendorf is the skunk at Barack Obama’s garden party. Last week, the director of the Congressional Budget Office blew a national debt-sized hole in the president’s plans for the speedy enactment of Obamacare: Elmendorf testified that none of the major Democratic reform bills reduce federal spending on health care.
In fact, Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee that the House Democrats’ plan would make the problem worse to the tune of $239 billion. “In the legislation that has been reported, we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount,” he told the panel’s chairman, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.”
