The CBO On "Saving Money"

The "Center for Barack Obama", or is it the Congressional Budget Office, has made the outrageous statement that the so-called "public option" in the health care proposal will actually save money. So now the projected cost of reform is only $871 Billion over 10 years. Of course, as has already been explained, the actual reform won't kick in until year 4 and the first 3 years will just be up front billings, so they really expect the cost to be $871 Billion over 7 years.

But what does it mean for the government to save money? Bara Bama has pledged not to deficit spend to pay for reform. This is of course a blatant slight of hand - he'll rob Medicare to pay for his reform, and then have to cover the holes he created in Medicare somehow, or just claim that it then also needs to be reformed. Ta-da, the Prestige!

Inclusion of the public option in the proposal saves money only when a specific number of people are included under the plan. Somehow, the CBO knows what that number is: 15-20 million Americans. This is within the 7 years of coverage. Beyond that is anyone's guess, but I'm guessing the number won't go down.

Here's the point: Government cannot save money. It can only spend money, and it acquires the money to spend either through taxes or by issuing new debt and running the presses, and eventually tax revenues pay for that debt. Either way, American tax payers pay for everything. Passing any health care reform proposal, by any estimate, will not save money; it can only cost more than what we are currently paying the government to do everything it does. In this case, according to the CBO, $871 Billion more.

This is a popular misconception among liberals, who are confused about the ownership of money. To Pelosi and her ilk, money is not yours or mine, it's theirs - the government - and as such we are only borrowing from the Great Provider, and if they want to take back a little more for the common good, we should all be thankful for their benevolence.

This mode of thinking is appalling; taxation is akin to legalized theft. Unfortunately, in this country those who do not contribute and who take are at least as valuable as those who provide, thanks to voting laws and widespread fraud, perpetrated almost exclusively on behalf of Democrats. So there's very little any sensible person can do about the current regime's theft policy, and the current slant is a lot to undo in a single election cycle. This is relevant because current polling (typically over-sampled with democrats) suggests people are actually in favor of a public option, and that is as good as currency for Congress to pass a bill to Bama's desk.

At this point I could take this post any number of ways but that would distract from the point. Government can never save money, it can only spend more than it currently is.