The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Max Baucus health care proposal will reduce the deficit by $49 billion over 10 years. Peter Suderman notes that despite the CBO's many caveats (mainly involving the fact that all of the savings it calls for may never actually get implemented), it's still the best break proponents of health care legislation have gotten in months. I agree in the sense that Baucus has shown that it's possible to get a good score from the CBO on a health care bill, but the problem for Democrats is that Baucus achieved this score with a proposal that ditches the government plan, offers less generous subsidies than other Democratic bills, and imposes a tax on high-end health plans that unions passionately object to. It's a plan that may score well with the CBO, but that hasn't been able to pass muster with liberals.