Cooking The Books

For political reasons Congress and the President considered it essential that the “health care reform” bill be deficit neutral; apparently we want to help people, but it’s important that we not actually spend any money doing so. If the bill were to impact the federal deficit then it would fail, because the American people would overwhelmingly reject it.

The following dialog occurred on Countdown list night, and I don’t know if the highlighted fact in it is accurate or not, but if it is we've been sold a con job.

Olbermann: How did the banks and the Republicans let the student loan thing sweep by? Because that just cut, he just put a hole in the banks.

Alter: Yes. This was maybe the most inspired move of the last six weeks. Congressman George Miller deserves a lot of the credit for it. Basically, there was this indefensible system where the government was backing these loans but the banks were taking a big chunk. You had Republicans and some Democrats who are defending that ridiculous status quo, even though $68 billion has been saved by the taxpayers, and it was central to the deal for reconciliation for health care, because it brought down the cost of the health care bill and that‘s one of the only reasons it scored properly at the Congressional Budget Office was because of the student loan deal.

The real value of all of this talk about lowering cost is revealed in that statement. We are “reducing the cost” of health care, but only by saving $68 billion on college loans.