United Liberty

Just to give an update on the unveiling of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care legislation. The bill has been released, it’s 1,990 pages of bureaucratic language (how many pages is the Constitution?) at a cost of $894 billion (the previous amount I gave was from a score of the “robust” government-run plan).

The legislation will have an impact on the deficit:

The Congressional Budget Office offered Pelosi and her team some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the bill shouldn’t add to the deficit over the first decade after its enactment. The bad is that the legislation is projected to create deficits over the second five years, a fact that should give budget hawks plenty to worry about.

Saving in the first ten years are estimated at $30 billion. Keep in mind that any “savings” are a straw man, as I’ve pointed out before. Deficits over the next ten years are estimated to exceed $9 trillion and the CBO says savings are subject to “subject to substantial uncertainty.” So don’t take any notion defict reduction seriously, by any means, let alone the idea that Congress has to spend $894 billion to save $3 billion a year over the course of a decade.

Pelosi wants the bill on the floor by November 11th, two weeks from now. Many members in the Democratic caucus are taking a “wait-and-see” approach at the moment.