By Susan Duclos
Unintended consequences continue to unfold as Americans find out what is in the mammoth Obamacare law that Obama and Democrats jammed through Congress. The latest consequences described by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the estimated cost of Obamacare has once again risen and now carries a price tag of $1.3 trillion over the next decade.
Also included in the CBO report is confirmation of what conservatives predicted before Democrats passed Obamacare and Obama signed it into law.
First a quick flashback, via ABC News, to just one of many times Barack Obama publicly claimed "Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you. First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you
like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.
Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
President Obama's health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.
CBO said that this year's tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they'll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade. (Source)
That estimate is up from 4 million that the CBO projected in a study last summer.
Another finding which should be concerning to every American, via the CBO report:
Nevertheless, the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 7½ percent through next year; if that happens, 2014 will be the sixth consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 7½ percent of the labor force—the longest such period in the past 70 years.Heritage lists some bullet points of other CBO estimates:
While President Obama keeps calling for more taxes, today’s figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show the tax hike he signed into law just last month will provide no lasting improvement in the federal government’s fiscal outlook. This is because spending continues to grow, driving deficits back toward the $1 trillion range by late in the decade. If the President is actually serious about solving the nation’s fiscal problems, he must move to the other side of his “balanced approach”: cutting spending.Read the entire thing because it helps explain why the CBO estimates continue to change because of assumptions they make.
The figures in the CBO’s The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023, show the following:
- Spending this year will reach $3.6 trillion and climb to nearly $6 trillion by 2023, or 22.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Government spending will continue to swallow up more than one-fifth the economy’s total output through the 10-year budget projection, reaching 22.9 percent of GDP by 2023, far in excess of its historical level of 20.2 percent. Even with taxes running above their historical average, spending persistently outruns tax revenue, resulting in chronic deficits that grow persistently after 2016. This report confirms, as have its predecessors, that the federal government’s fiscal woes are driven by its massive spending problem.
- With economic growth and President Obama’s two tax increases, the $1 trillion tax hike in Obamacare, and the $618 billion fiscal cliff increase, revenues will surge to 19.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, and will remain well above the historical average of 18.5 percent for the rest of the decade. These figures offer conclusive proof that—notwithstanding the assertions of the President and Senate Democrats—there is plenty of revenue flowing into Washington.
- Yet even all this new revenue fails to solve the government’s fiscal problems. Starting at $845 billion this year, deficits shrink somewhat through 2016, but then start rising again, returning to near the trillion-dollar range by 2023. The pattern proves that higher taxes cannot solve the deficit problem—only spending restraint can.
- Debt held by the public this year will be $12.2 trillion, or 76.3 percent of GDP. This debt will remain at around three-fourths the size of the economy or above throughout the decade. These are the highest levels of publicly held debt in 60 years, but unlike those of World War II, these are structural deficits that will persist and worsen over the longer term. Moreover, the projection is based on optimistic assumptions. If different policy outcomes occur (see below), debt held by the public could reach 87 percent of GDP by 2023. With debt at this level, economic growth would slow dramatically.
- Entitlements, which the President refuses to address, continue to drive the spending problem. These programs—led by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—will cause entitlement spending to rise from 13.2 percent of GDP this year to 14.1 percent by 2023, and reach nearly 62 percent of the entire federal budget. Those who claim to be defending these programs by stubbornly resisting needed reforms are only ensuring they will collapse under their own costs. Obamacare makes matters worse, adding nearly $1 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years just for its insurance subsidies. The health care overhaul also will increase spending for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by hundreds of billions of dollars. In dollar terms, spending on Social Security and the health entitlements will more than double in the next 10 years, from $885 billion this year to $1.85 trillion in 2023.