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One moderate Democrat, Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, said Sunday that he is certain the CBO score will “match up” with the White House “zero cost” claim. This is hardly surprising since the CBO will be using data provided by the Treasury Department and White House to conduct their analysis. Democrats gamed the system by proposing programs that would sunset before the end of the ten-year spending period.
The idea is that they would be renewed later when the heat is off. An analysis of this “permanent extension scenario” by the University of Pennsylvania Penn-Wharton Budget Model puts the true costs of the bill at $4.13 trillion, over half of which would be deficit spending — unless taxes were hiked even higher. It’s silly, though, to think that ten-year budget projections are at all accurate anyway. CBO might as well stand for Crystal Ball Observers.
