TuTu Monroe
A Realist
July 18, 2009
President Obama yesterday ordered Congress to move full speed ahead on health care -- ignoring both growing resistance within his own party and a warning from Capitol Hill's top budget watchdog of soaring costs ahead.
"Now is not the time to slow down or lose heart," the president said, also warning that any health-care overhaul enacted by Congress "cannot add to the deficit, and I mean it."
But in bombshell testimony Thursday that rocked Capitol Hill, the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned that proposals now before the House and the Senate would do exactly that -- and then some.
All the more reason to slow down and not rush this process -- one of the most radical proposed social-policy changes in four decades.
Because the long-term effects of what the president is trying to ram through Congress without adequate scrutiny will be disastrous.
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf warned: "We do not see the sort of fundamental changes [to reduce spending] that would be necessary to offset the direct increase in health costs that would result.
"On the contrary," he said, "the legislation significantly expands the federal [financial] responsibility for health-care costs."
Translation: Guaranteeing health-care coverage for uninsured Americans via a government-run program would just pile on costs, worsening a long-term federal budget crisis that, he also warned, "is on an unsustainable path."
Which is precisely what the 52-member Blue Dog coalition of moderate Democrats is telling both the president and their party's congressional leadership.
Indeed, there were key Democratic defections joining with united Republican opposition yesterday, though two committees narrowly approved the House bill.
Both the president -- who's been hot for a bill from Day One -- and Congress need to slow down.
Because their prescription will only worsen the underlying illness.
NYPOST-rcp
President Obama yesterday ordered Congress to move full speed ahead on health care -- ignoring both growing resistance within his own party and a warning from Capitol Hill's top budget watchdog of soaring costs ahead.
"Now is not the time to slow down or lose heart," the president said, also warning that any health-care overhaul enacted by Congress "cannot add to the deficit, and I mean it."
But in bombshell testimony Thursday that rocked Capitol Hill, the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned that proposals now before the House and the Senate would do exactly that -- and then some.
All the more reason to slow down and not rush this process -- one of the most radical proposed social-policy changes in four decades.
Because the long-term effects of what the president is trying to ram through Congress without adequate scrutiny will be disastrous.
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf warned: "We do not see the sort of fundamental changes [to reduce spending] that would be necessary to offset the direct increase in health costs that would result.
"On the contrary," he said, "the legislation significantly expands the federal [financial] responsibility for health-care costs."
Translation: Guaranteeing health-care coverage for uninsured Americans via a government-run program would just pile on costs, worsening a long-term federal budget crisis that, he also warned, "is on an unsustainable path."
Which is precisely what the 52-member Blue Dog coalition of moderate Democrats is telling both the president and their party's congressional leadership.
Indeed, there were key Democratic defections joining with united Republican opposition yesterday, though two committees narrowly approved the House bill.
Both the president -- who's been hot for a bill from Day One -- and Congress need to slow down.
Because their prescription will only worsen the underlying illness.
NYPOST-rcp
