CBO: Dem Plan Cuts Only $4.7 Billion - $150 Billion Hidden in Obamacare

Today in Washington, D.C. - March 8, 2011: 
Yesterday, as anticipated the Senate unanimously confirmed 3 district court nominees. Not much effort here to stop the Obama take over of the American court system. While these nominations may have been okay - many others have not been in the best interests of the American people.

Today the Senate will resume post-cloture consideration of S.23 the Death to Innovation < Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said he would like to set up competing cloture votes on Fiscal 2011 appropriations plans. The House Republican plan, H.R. 1, would cut $61 billion from the budget, while the Senate Democrats’ plan, the Inouye substitute amendment, would cut only $4.7 billion. The votes could be this afternoon or sometime Wednesday.

Yesterday, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) was on FoxNews yesterday identifying $105 BILLION in funding "buried" federal health law (aka Obamacare). She identified that "the money was included as "mandatory" spending over the next eight years, she said, meaning it's automatic and not subject to annual spending votes by Congress." She wants to use the fiscal 2011 budget process to eliminate his mandatory embedded (hidden) money in Obamacare. She is sharing this information in hopes of leveraging a must-pass budget bill to ensure Congress strips billions of dollars from the federal health care overhaul which she says was "unfairly baked into the law." The Congressional Research Service broke it all down in an eight-page table.

The Heritage Foundation is calling for defunding this "Obamacare's Secret Stash" and warns that:

"While Obamacare is rightly notorious as a fiscal nightmare, less well known is just how massively it transferred power from Congress to the executive branch. In fact, the full scope of Congress’s abdication is still unknown. What is now known, however, is that deeply buried within Obamacare was a $105 billion slush fund that assures its implementation into the future, no matter what future voters think or want.

This makes then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment to the Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties about Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” made a year ago tomorrow, ironically prescient. Just this past month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) updated an October 2010 report titled “Appropriations and Fund Transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).” The new report found that, unbeknownst to almost every Member of Congress, Obamacare contains $105 billion in direct implementation spending that bypasses Congress’s normal appropriations process."

Ernest Istook explains the impact:

Making years’ worth of spending decisions in advance is an attempt to handcuff the current Congress and prevent it from determining current levels of spending. … The funds in Obamacare are not budget projections but actual appropriations of money. Obamacare goes far beyond any precedent for making appropriations for future years; it is an outrageous effort by the former Congress to bind the current and future Congresses in this way.

Last week, Senate Democrats unveiled their budget plan for the rest of this year, boasting that it met House Republicans “halfway” from the spending cuts in their bill. Since then, news organizations have repeatedly corrected Democrats that their bill cuts nowhere near that much. Indeed, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog awarded Democrats “two Pinocchios” for their absurd claim last week and today gives a third for President Obama repeating the claim over the weekend. “[T]he persistent claims of going ‘halfway’ when in fact Democrats have done little to engage Republicans on the issue will only hurt their credibility in the long run.”

Now, though, there is an official score from the Congressional Budget Office on the Democrat plan. According to the CBO, their bill cuts only $4.7 billion from a budget of over $1 trillion.

Today, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell expressed his frustration with Democrats’ lack of seriousness on getting spending under control, “We’re averaging about $4 billion a day in debt this year, and Democrats want to cut $4.7 billion and call it a day. That’s their idea of getting serious. Washington will add more to the debt this week than they want to cut for the entire year — and that’s the farthest their leaders say they’re willing to go. . . . Last month alone the federal government spent $223 billion more than it had, the highest monthly deficit ever and the 29^th straight month Washington’s been in the red. And here’s the Democrats’ proposal: let’s cut $4.7 billion and call it a day. $4.7 billion dollars — even less than the President called for last week. And even that was ridiculed because of the preposterous claim that it met us halfway.”

Even some Democrat senators are saying they can’t go along with such irresponsible spending plans. As Politico reported, “Democratic leaders are having trouble just keeping moderates on board — Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) have also expressed skepticism that Democrats are willing to cut enough spending to satisfy voters and make a dent in the deficit.” Under pressure from home and from blogs McCaskill said, “I feel strongly that the cuts are not large enough, but there are some cuts, so I don’t know whether I’ll be for it or against it. . . . But I know it doesn’t go as far as we need to go.”

And Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on the Senate floor blasted the Democrat spending plan and President Obama’s failure to lead on spending. He said the Democrat bill “utterly ignores our fiscal reality — our nation is badly in debt and spending at absolutely unsustainable and out-of-control levels. . . . We must turn our financial ship around, but the Senate proposal continues to sail forward as if there’s no storm on the horizon.” And he wondered, “Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these negotiations — our president — has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for?”

As Leader McConnell y, “. . .  here’s the hard truth: even the biggest cuts under discussion this week are puny compared to the fiscal problems we face in the area of entitlements. I mean, it’s pitched battle around here over $4.7 billion when we’ve got a $14 trillion debt and more than $50 trillion in entitlement promises Washington can’t keep. If Democrats can’t bring themselves to cut $4.6 billion, how are we going to get a handle on the big stuff? “Democrats are going to have to do a lot better than this if we stand a chance of getting our nation’s fiscal house in order,” McConnell said. Frankly, it’s embarrassing. The American people deserve better than this.”

Over in the US House, the Republican leadership remains focused on reducing government spending.  A House source advised that the Republican leadership is preparing another "stop gap" continuing resolution to keep the government running beyond the March 18 deadline. Speaker Boehner remains committed to reducing federal spending and the new resolution will include spending cuts. The last two week continuing resolution created $4 billion in savings.

Closing with words from the Heritage Foundation, "Our nation cannot afford to fund the federal government by continuing resolutions, which perpetuate the status quo—a status quo where Obamacare’s implementation is already funded. In order to truly defund Obamacare, conservatives must go through all 2,700 pages of the bill and cut spending for every program one by one. That is the mandate this Congress was elected on. Members need to do their jobs."

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