As promised last
night, I want to correct the record on a few of President
Obama’s misleading statements — and yes — outright lies from
last night’s news conference. (Full transcript
here.) I will update it as I gather more information
throughout the day.
Obama Statement #1:
First of all, let’s understand that when I came in, we had a
$1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, that we had already
inherited. We had to immediately more forward with a stimulus
package because the American economy had lost trillions of
dollars of wealth.…
Then we had to pass a budget, by law, and our budget had a 10-
year projection — and I just want everybody to be clear about
this. If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as
opposed to the changes we made in your budget, you’d have a
$9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the
changes we’ve made, it’s going to be 7.1 trillion (dollars).
Now, that’s not good, but it’s $2.2 trillion less than it would
have been if we had the same policies in place when we came in.
But here is what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about Obama’s
budget:
The cumulative deficit from 2010 to 2019 under the President’s
proposals would total $9.3 trillion, compared with a cumulative
deficit of $4.4 trillion projected under the current-law
assumptions embodied in CBO’s baseline.
So in other words, Obama said his cumulative deficit is “$2.2
trillion less than it would have been,” but the CBO says the
deficit is actually $4.9 trillion more than it otherwise
would have been.
Obama Statement #2:
And we know that we’re spending, on average — we here in the
United States — are spending about $6,000 more than other
advanced countries where they’re just as healthy. And I’ve —
I’ve said this before. If you found out that your neighbor had
gotten the same car for $6,000 less, you’d want to figure out
how to get that deal. And that’s what reform’s all about, how
can we make sure that we are getting the best bang for our
health-care dollar.
I’m guessing that when he said “we’re spending, on
average…about $6,000 more than other advanced countries” he was
referring to the gap between the the per person cost of health
care in the United States and in other nations. While it’s true
that Americans pay more than any other country, the
actual health care costs per person in the U.S. were
about $6,000 in 2007, according to a CBO report.
So for Obama’s claim to be true — that is, that other countries
are spending $6,000 less, on average — you’d have to believe
that it costs every other advanced country zero dollars to
provide all of their citizens with health care.
For further study, here’s how we compare
to other OECD nations.
UPDATE: My $6,000 figure is from this
CBO report. The OECD pegs the number at $7,290, but Obama’s
number still doesn’t add up. See more here.
Obama Statement #3:
I am very appreciative that people like Chuck Grassley on the
Finance Committee, in the Senate, people like Mike Enzi, people
like Olympia Snowe have been serious in engaging Democrats in
trying to figure out, how do we actually get a system that
works? And even in those committees where you didn’t see
Republican votes, we’ve seen Republican ideas.
So, for example, in the HELP committee in the Senate, 160
Republican amendments were adopted into that bill, because
they’ve got good ideas to contribute. So the politics may
dictate that they don’t vote for health-care reform because
they think, you know, it’ll make Obama more vulnerable. But if
they’ve got a good idea, we’ll still take it.
But Enzi, who Obama favorably cites, said
last week: “In 12 days of mark-up, we had 45 roll call votes
on Republican-sponsored amendments, and only 2 prevailed.”
Why is there such a discrepancy? I posed that question to Enzi
spokesman Craig Orfield, who explained in an email:
The 160 refers to what we call technicals - these are
amendments drafted to either correct technical errors in the
bill language - and that can be anything from an amendment
which cites the wrong section and paragraph of existing law
(ex: Section 302 when we meant section 304) to errors in
punctuation or transposed words.
Moreover, the vast majority of these were so non-controversial
that the majority didn’t even demand a vote - they were simply
adopted by unanimous consent.
As you note from Sen. Enzi’s remarks only 45 GOP amendments,
which we consider to have made substantive changes or
improvements, were allowed a vote. 2 of those were agreed to.
POTUS is echoing the same nonsensical line on this as Axelrod
and Emanuel last week.
Agreement on technical amendments is no pedigree of
bipartisanship.
