While the Congressional Budget Office gave a fiscal
thumbs up to the Senate Finance Committee's health care
legislation, it included an important disclaimer: the estimates
were only preliminary, and could change significantly once the
current draft of the bill is converted from plain English into
legislative language. But the Democrats have already blocked an
effort to wait for the legislative language for a vote on the
bill.
"CBO and JCT's analysis is preliminary in large part because the
Chairman's mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in
legislative language," CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote his a
letter to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.
Later in the letter, under a section titled "Important Caveats
Regarding This Preliminary Analysis," Elmendorf cautioned: "The
Chairman's mark, as amended, has not yet been converted into
legislative language. The review of such language could lead to
significant changes in the estimates of the proposal's effects on
the federal budget and insurance coverage."
Last month, Democrats on the committee
killed an amendment proposed by Sen. Jim Bunning that would
have required the committee to have the actual legislative
language of its health care bill evaluated by the CBO before
voting on it. It failed by a 12-11 vote, with Sen. Blanche
Lincoln the lone dissenting Democrat.
"Let's be honest about it, most people don't read the legislative
language," Sen. John Kerry said at the time.
The reason this could prove significant is that Sen. Olympia
Snowe -- the one Republican who could potentially vote the bill
out of committee -- was a strong advocate of waiting for
legislative language.
"The American people are rightly entitled to see what we are
legislating and we should not be afraid of having a better and
more complete understanding of exactly what we are doing," Snowe
said in a statement last month. "The fact is words matter and
so do the numbers. This amendment represents a common sense,
practical, pragmatic, good government approach to understanding
the totality and the collective impact of what we do. We want to
be sure that we are absolutely confident in the integrity of the
product that we are going to be voting on in the final analysis."
