The Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would leave 24 million more Americans without health insurance by 2026 than under current law, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office released Monday. The CBO report found that 14 million more people would be without health insurance by 2018. Following a two-year spike, the plan would also lower average premiums after 2020, relative to President Barack Obama's healthcare law.
This week, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal government would earn roughly $127 billion from student lending during the next 10 years. That estimate is down a bit from previous figures but is surely high enough to infuriate liberals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who tend to regard the idea of a profitable student loan program as fundamentally indecent.
U.S. budget deficits over the next decade will be $286 billion less than previously estimated, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday, attributing much of the decline to lower estimates of subsidy costs under President Barack Obama's health insurance reform law. The non-partisan CBO, in revisions to its annual budget estimates, said the fiscal 2014 deficit would fall to $492 billion from $514 billion estimated in February. The forecasts assume no changes to current tax and spending laws.
At least one Republican is setting the record straight on what the Congressional Budget Office actually said this week about Obamacare and its effect on jobs. House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained in a Wednesday hearing with CBO director Steven Elmendorf that the health care reform law wouldn't cost the U.S. economy more than 2 million jobs, as many of his colleagues alleged, but that Americans would choose to work less. "I want to make sure we accurately understand what it is you are saying," Ryan said, before leading Elmendorf through a series of questions to explain the report and its findings.
"We got a report today about Obamacare that was both surprising and widely misunderstood," CBS anchor Scott Pelley said on his Tuesday show. Part of the reason for that misunderstanding? Many of Pelley's fellow members of the media.
Here is a partial list of bipartisan budget negotiations we've had since 2010: The Simpson-Bowles Commission (which, people forget, was the legacy of a 2010 debt-ceiling increase). The Domenici-Rivlin commission. The Cantor-Biden talks. The Obama-Boehner debt-ceiling negotiations. The Gang of Six talks. The "Supercommittee." The Obama-Boehner fiscal-cliff talks.