As Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard reports, the Congressional Budget Office says that “Although CBO completed a preliminary review of legislative language prior to its release, the agency has not thoroughly examined the reconciliation proposal to verify its consistency with the previous draft. This estimate is therefore preliminary, pending a review of the language of the reconciliation proposal, as well as further review and refinement of the budgetary projections.” As the Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio reported Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn was “absolutely giddy” about the score, which was under the toxic $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) figure. Will he be as “absolutely giddy” about the final figure?
When will it come? Anna Edney of Congress Daily tweets “Final cbo scores to replace preliminary expected friday or saturday, leadership aide says.” Friday or Saturday–that’s pretty vague: I guess it means some time during a 48-hour period. Does this mean that the House vote on the health care bill will have to be put off until after Sunday, when Barack Obama is (re)scheduled to leave on his trip to Indonesia and Australia? Stay tuned.
