Orszag strikes out as Social Security goes bankrupt

Before he came to Obama's Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag used to work for the Congressional Budget Office. While there, Orszag warned that Social Security would start running deficits in 2019 unless the system is reformed. Orszag was off by about 3,285 days. The New York Times is reporting that as of today, Social Security is officially producing red ink.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.

With the Obama Administration having done nothing to help create jobs, somewhere near 20% of the country is estimated to be unemployed or underemployed. Those people are paying little to nothing to the Social Security Administration, which has rapidly accelerated its collapse. Turns out you actually need people to be productive in order to tax them. And with the economy already teetering on top of massive debt and a $1 trillion health care bill on the way, Social Security recipients will find there isn't very much money left to go around. The program could go bust any day at this point.

The same CBO that miscalculated Social Security's red ink by nine years also claimed the health care bill would reduce the deficit. Its former oracle, Orszag, now has the president's ear on all budget matters.

CBO gives BHO the green light on health care reform

There's a very, very good chance that ObamaCare will become law now.

Most congressmen sitting on the fence are Blue Dog Democrats who were waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to score the new reconciliation bill. The fiscally conservative Dems had two requests: They wanted the total bill to weigh in under $1 trillion and they wanted it to reduce the deficit over the next ten years. Moments ago, the CBO released its final analysis.

Senior Democratic aides Thursday provided a snapshot of what they say the Congressional Budget Office has found after evaluating the latest revised version of the health care bill — including the package of fixes.

House Democrats say the legislation will cost $940 billion over 10 years and will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion in that first decade.

As has been repeated at length and chronicled here, none of this is true. ObamaCare is chock full of double accounting and financial tricks that have led many to compare it to Bernie Madoff. The CBO can only grade the bill that's put in front of them. They're forbidden from making even common sense predictions outside of the language of the bill. Somehow Pelosi and company managed to twist the bill's provisions enough to squeeze out a cost estimate below $1 trillion.

It's still impossible to know what will happen, but it seems almost certain that some wavering Blue Dogs will finally fall in line with Pelosi. It's much easier to vote for a $940 billion bill than a $1 trillion bill -- as the blogger Allahpundit pointed out yesterday, it's why things are priced at $99.99 rather than $100.00. The Hill's whip count found that the bill would fail 207-224 yesterday, but those numbers are highly speculative and likely to change today. House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn has already said, "We are absolutely giddy" over the CBO numbers. If the Democrats finally do have the votes, we could see a final House vote as early as this weekend.

Confirmed: ObamaCare will destroy jobs, raise premiums

Today we confirmed what most people have suspected for a long time: If passed, ObamaCare will take a wrecking ball to the economy. Two different studies came out today that show just how much economic wreckage there would be.

The first, conducted by Americans for Tax Reform and the Beacon Hill Institute of Suffolk University, technically hasn't been released yet, but the blog Hot Air got a sneak peek. Nancy Pelosi has been going around telling people that health care reform could create up to four million new jobs over the next ten years. That figure comes from a "study" done by the Center for American Progress. ATR and BHI went back and used the exact same methods that CAP used. They came to a very different conclusion: up to 700,000 jobs will be lost thanks to health care reform by 2019.

Using the CAP methodology, we find that the bill would destroy a total of 120,000 to 700,000 jobs by 2019, a far cry from the number suggested by leading advocates.

CAP’s claim about job creation rests on its assumption that various developments ensuing from passage of the bill – upgrades in medical technology, the promotion of preventive care and the reduction in administrative costs – would save $683 billion over ten‐years and thus set in motion new incentives for firms to create jobs. The trouble is that the claimed costs savings are at odds with estimates from both Congress and the Executive Branch, which, together, are responsible for considering and ultimately implementing the legislation.

There is no evidence that the projected savings proposed by the Obama administration, particularly in areas such as preventive care, would ever materialize. The literature cited by proponents is speculative at best. Also, there is no guarantee that the administration would be successful in lowering insurance premiums while expanding coverage, without limiting access to health care.

In other words, the Center for American Progress cooked the books. CAP is a progressive think tank founded by John Podesta that is often said to be in cahoots with the Obama Administration. According to Time magazine, "Just as candidate Obama depended on CAP during the campaign for opposition research and talking points, [then-] President-elect Obama has effectively contracted out the management of his own government's formation to [CAP President John] Podesta." CAP also employs former green jobs czar Van Jones.

The second bit of bad news involves premiums. Obama has been repeatedly declaring that his health care plan will bring premiums down. He's made two different claims: that rates will drop by as much as 20% and that employer-based insurance premiums for the employer would decrease by up to $3,000.

The Associated Press found both of these to be lies. The first claim is easily disproved by the Congressional Budget Office, which stated in its report that the average insurance-buyer would see premiums increase by 10% to 13% under ObamaCare. The second claim stems from a study by the Business Roundtable which found that health care reform in general could lower employer premiums by $3,000. But it didn't examine the current legislation being considered at all. According to the Congressional Budget Office -- arguably a more trustworthy source than the Business Roundtable -- employer premiums under ObamaCare would fall maybe 3%, an almost negligible amount. And that would do nothing to offset the far larger increases for the individual insurance purchaser.