Former CBO Director: House Health Care Bill Will Add To Deficit

By Leah Valencia – University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

Former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin said Monday that the House health care legislation is not deficit neutral and will not be fiscally sustainable over time.

“The heart of this bill is to repeat two of the greatest policy errors this country has made: To create large unfunded entitlement spending programs and to have a tax law that is not politically viable over the long haul,” said Holtz-Eakin.

Holtz-Eakin said the bill is on track to produce over one trillion dollars of debt in the first ten years. He argued that Democrats are using gimmicks to balance the bill in the eyes of the Congressional Budget Office.

“The best we could do with the health care reform is break even,” said Holtz-Eakin “Genuinely be honest about how much new spending they are proposing and genuinely be honest about raising the revenue to cover it. [Democrats] are doing neither of those things.”

He said the actual gross cost to expand Medicaid would be $1.055 trillion, and other spending provisions in the bill would add up to a gross figure of $230 billion, totaling well over the $900 billion promised by House leaders.

“I think as a result, that these are reforms that are not durable in any deep sense and are not desirable from the point of view of policy.”