{"id":443098,"date":"2010-03-18T12:17:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T16:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=79616"},"modified":"2010-03-18T12:17:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T16:17:45","slug":"new-gop-spin-health-reform-might-cut-deficits-but-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/443098","title":{"rendered":"New GOP Spin: Health Reform Might Cut Deficits, but Not Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

By any objective measure, the $138 billion<\/a> in deficit savings the Democrats’ health reform bill would rack up over the next 10 years (while extending coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans) is quite an accomplishment — particularly coming from a Congress not exactly known for paying all its bills.<\/p>\n

But don’t try to convince the Republicans. After months of blasting the Democrats’ reform proposals for allegedly bankrupting the country with expensive new programs, Republicans now have a brand new message: The deficit savings aren’t enough to justify passing the bill. From The New York Times<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Republicans moved quickly to throw cold water on the claims, noting that government debt is piling up so fast that the health care legislation would barely make a dent. \u201cAny projected savings over 10 years have already been wiped out five times over in just the first five months of the current fiscal year,\u201d said Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.<\/p>\n

Mr. Stewart cited budget office data showing that the federal government had \u201cincurred a budget deficit of $655 billion in just the first five months of fiscal year 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Stewart didn’t mention that their own multi-billion dollar health reform accomplishment of this decade — the creation of Medicare’s (unfunded) prescription drug benefit — has contributed<\/a> no small amount<\/a> to the nation’s budget crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By any objective measure, the $138 billion in deficit savings the Democrats’ health reform bill would rack up over the next 10 years (while extending coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans) is quite an accomplishment — particularly coming from a Congress not exactly known for paying all its bills. But don’t try to convince the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}