CBO Scores Repeal Effort, Makes John Boehner Cry

The Congressional Budget Office landed a devastating blow to Republican efforts at repealing the Affordable Care Act today.  The very first matter taken up by the so-called fiscal conservatives-- who endlessly talk about an out-of-control budget deficit and a spiraling national debt-- will increase the deficit by $230 billion over ten years according to CBO.  Luckily for Republicans increasing the national debt and running huge budget deficits are the only requirements by modern media to qualify as a fiscal conservative.

Immediately Republicans rejected CBO findings by calling them incomplete and cited a study of their own that showed the health care reform bill would turn men into feeble monkeys and force your grandma into oncoming traffic.

Among some of the complaints from Republicans are CBO double counted, left out implementation costs and did not include the price of "doc fix" even though the ACA had no provisions for "doc fix" and contained nothing whatsoever to do with fixing Medicare payments to doctors.  Nevertheless, Republicans insist something not even contained in the bill should be when considering its costs.  That's like saying we owe China two trillion dollars for buying our debt so we better include that in the costs of the ACA.  Makes no sense whatsoever.  Then again, making sense isn't something Congress is especially good at.  And now that people who think tax cuts don't have to be offset are in charge, they'll be even better at it.

*Update:

Ezra Klein has an excellent smack down of just how stupid and dishonest it is for Republicans to even suggest "doc fix" should be included in a CBO score of the Affordable Care Act.  Ezra must be a Fold Blog reader because he makes the same point I do in that if "doc fix" must be included in the scoring of the passage of ACA, then it also must be included in the GOP's bill to repeal it, which would make the costs of repeal skyrocket to $540 billion. 

But Republicans don't want "doc fix" scored on their bill only the Democratic bill.  In part because "doc fix" has nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act and isn't even contained in the legislation and Republicans know this.  They just want to be able to add costly items to Dem bills without doing the same for theirs.  Sometimes we call that hypocrisy but when it's this prevalent it's called go suck a cock Repubs.