120 Division 1-A Teams or a 2,074 Page Bill

If you look on their website you will see that the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) main job is to provide "Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process." In other words, the CBO analyzes bills or other measures that Congress is intending to vote on and they normally give an estimate of how much a certain bill will cost. According to an article on MSNBC entitled "CBO: Senate health plan to cost $849 billion," we learn exactly what the title of the article relays too us. The CBO is estimating that the current 2,074 page health care bill will cost approximately $849 billion over ten years. The article further states that this bill "would reduce deficits by $127 billion over a decade and by as much as $650 billion in the 10 years that follow, citing as-yet-unreleased estimates by the Congressional Budget Office." According to those estimates this bill is going to be basically free. I mean what we spend on the bill initially will be almost equaled out by what we save through deficit reduction. While that does sound amazing it should be noted that the CBO is not always right on the money and understandably so.

In an article entitled "Don't Trust the CBO's Numbers" that appeared in the Wall Street Journal back on August 30, 2001, Alan Reynolds highlights a few CBO estimates that were not even close. And I quote "In 1993, the CBO predicted that the deficit would soar to $653 billion in 2003. This week, they said that same budget will be in surplus by $172 billion. Little of that $825 billion revision can be explained by legislation or luck. Nearly all of it reflects the magnitude of past forecasting blunders." One more quick excerpt from this same article, "Past forecasts often overstated deficits by huge amounts even for the current year -- by $78 billion in 1992 and $102 billion in 1997. In early 1998, the CBO thought the next year's surplus would be $2 billion, but it turned out to be $125 billion. Looking further ahead, CBO errors have been staggering. Next year's budget, now estimated to be in surplus by $176 billion, had once been expected to show deficits of $579 billion (per the CBO's 1993 forecast), $349 billion (1995 forecast), and $188 billion (1997 forecast)." For starters it is sickening to think that just a few years ago we actually had a surplus. I barely even know how to pronounce that word anymore. To get back on topic, anybody can do 10 minutes of research and see how far off the CBO has been in the past and why should expect anything different this time. I stated earlier that it is easy to see how these estimates can be so far off. The CBO is trying to give an estimate of a bills significance 10 and 20 years from now when not a single person on this planet knows what is going to happen in the next 5 minutes. How can we expect anybody to be able to accurately predict economic conditions 1 month, 1 year, or 10 years from now? Have these past few years taught us nothing at all? I saw the stock market make a 1000 point swing in one day. I saw an ETRADE account that I felt good about lose almost every gain in it during two weeks and that has been recently.

My gripe is not with the CBO but rather their task. In my opinion, they would have better luck forecasting every NFL game for this weekend down to the exact score, yards for each player, touchdowns for each player, receptions for each player, and so on. In fact I think that task would be easier than estimating the price of a 2,074 page health care bill over the next two decades. I truly believe estimating the price of this bill is comparable to getting a group of the greatest college football experts together and asking them to predict the exact score, yardage, touchdowns, receptions, field goals, penalties and any other category you want to thrown in for all 120 Division 1-A teams for each of their games this upcoming weekend. Their predictions would be close for some categories and horrible for other categories. Remember Appalachian State vs. Michigan a little over two years ago. We would be wise to remember that things like that happen in our economy too. There is no doubt that the CBO does incredible work more often than not but I hope that we take their estimates in stride as we weigh the benefits of this bill.

Website addresses appear in order of appearance below:

1. http://www.cbo.gov/aboutcbo/

2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34017224/ns/politics-health_care_reform/)

3. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3910