During a Budget Committee hearing Tuesday, Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions revealed a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that showed President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will add $6.2 trillion to the deficit over the next several decades and increase the federal debt 0.7 percent of the gross domestic product.
Sessions, who requested the GAO perform the report, said that the study verifies what Republicans and critics of the legislation have been stating since the president made his healthcare proposal. The president had been claiming the bill would be fiscally sound, but reports keep suggesting otherwise.
“The big-government crowd in Washington manipulated the numbers in order to get the financial score they wanted, in order to get their bill passed and to increase power and influence,” stated the Alabama Senator in remarks to the committee. “The goal was not truth or financial responsibility, but to pass the bill. This is how a country goes broke. It’s also how the economy and jobs are destroyed.”
The nonpartisan agency’s report is deemed as one of the first analyses into the long-term effects of Obamacare rather than just a 10-year outlook. The GAO study performed two simulations: baseline-extended simulation and an alternative simulation.
The first scenario took an optimistic approach and didn’t include the apprehensions the of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Trustees. The second scenario conducted a realistic methodology that consisted of “alternative projections” recommended by the aforementioned groups as well as Medicare’s chief actuary.
Costs associated with Obamacare continue to rise. One of the latest outlooks at Obamacare by the CBO projected that it would create $2 trillion in deficits, while others said it would lead to a price tag of $4 trillion.
CBO’s $6.4 trillion projections
On Tuesday, the CBO released a different report that looked at the president’s budget proposal. It discovered that it would add $6.4 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years. The administration’s February budget request would alone generate a $1 trillion deficit in 2013.The CBO even took into account reduced war spending, but was still left with the gigantic figure.
Also, the administration’s proposed budget would increase the national debt held by the general public from $10.1 trillion to as high as $18.8 trillion in 2022, which accounts to more than three-quarters of the GDP.
“It confirms the president will not fulfill his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term — after four straight deficits in excess of $1 trillion, CBO estimates next year’s deficit will be even higher than the president claims,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan in a statement. “When it comes to our generation’s greatest challenges, the president refuses to take accountability or demonstrate much-needed leadership.”
Essentially, the president’s budget increases spending by $137 billion and decreases revenue by $228 billion in 2013. Next year, the Obama budget would spend $3.7 trillion and receive $1.5 trillion from new taxes over a 10-year timeframe, according to the congressional agency’s projections.
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