If you’ve been watching the GOP primaries, you know that the right wing cares absolutely nothing for truth, in fact, almost always preferring to lead with lies about President Obama, global warming, gas prices, the Affordable Care Act, the economy, unemployment, and on and on, all catering to the preferences of the 1% who are funding the Republican super PACS.
This past week the CBO came out with a revised estimate of the cost of the Affordable Care Act; it will actually cost less than the CBO had previously estimated, and that isn’t even mentioning the fact that it will reduce our deficit by massive amounts ($210 billion over the 2012-2021 period).
Republicans, including Rick Santorum, came out with .......no, not spin, but outright lies about the CBO’s revised estimate, because of course they can’t win an election if they don’t lie about POTUS’ policies, accomplishments, the improving economy, and so forth. Rick Santorum’s lie was told to a small crowd in Missouri on Friday:
“You know what people are going to be talking about this week and next week? Obamacare. Why? Well, the Congressional Budget Office this week just came out with their new numbers. And I know you’re gonna be shocked to hear this, but it’s twice as expensive as what President Obama said.”
And there was a lot more Republican spin on the CBO report, some of it listed by FactCheck.org:
- House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia put out a press release saying that “[t]he new CBO projection estimates that the law will cost $1.76 trillion over 10 years – well above the $940 billion Democrats originally claimed.”
- Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions also issued a release saying: “President Obama told the American people his health law would cost around $900 billion over 10 years, but CBO’s numbers reveal that we will spend more than $1.75 trillion on only the coverage provisions over just 9 years.”
- Several of our readers emailed us about a Fox News article that repeated the Republicans’ claims, saying that the CBO had found the law would cost “twice as much as the original $900 billion price tag.”
Um, NO.
FactCheck.org rated that a big fat “absolutely untrue” lie.
In a March 13 report, the CBO gave updated estimates for the cost of insurance coverage provisions of the law for the 2012-2021 period. It said the gross cost — not including revenue measures — would be slightly higher than it had estimated a year earlier, in March 2011. The latest estimate puts the cost at $1.496 trillion over that decade, up by about $50 billion, which is a 3.5 percent increase.
The latest estimate of year-by-year costs is also higher than what was originally estimated two years ago, when the bill was enacted. The latest estimate covers only eight of the years (2012 through 2019) that are in the original estimate. The total “gross” costs of that eight-year period are now estimated to be just over $1 trillion, or about 8.6 percent higher than originally projected.
But the CBO also projects that much of the new spending will be offset by penalties paid by employers who choose not to provide coverage to their workers, by penalties paid by individuals who opt not to obtain coverage, by taxing high-cost health plans and by other effects of the law’s coverage provisions. After accounting for these offsets, the “net” cost of the coverage provisions are now expected to be somewhat lower than projected two years ago. Comparing the eight years that are common to both estimates, the net cost is now predicted to be $772 billion, or about half a percent lower than originally estimated.
There is no doubt in my mind that Republicans, including Rick Santorum, will continue to lie about this and anything else that shines a light on what a remarkable job President Obama has done in his first four years, so it’s up to all of us who support this president to make sure that we both know the facts, and that we grab the opportunity to convey those facts whenever necessary.
By the way, I ran across this topless photo of Santorum on Dave Weigel’s blog, and thought you might like a look at the pasty white and unattractive Rick sunbathing in Puerto Rico last week.
UPDATE: The lie has gone viral in wingnutland, and as a result, we now have many more articles from other entities debunking the lies. Like this one from Paul Krugman, this one from the CBO, and another from Media Matters.
You’d think that the right wing would get the message.
