UPDATE:
In the battle of budget scores, the Senate Democrats’ deficit reduction bill is the clear leader thus far over an alternative by Speaker John Boehner, which had to be pulled back from the floor Tuesday night for retooling.
The Congressional Budget Office released a report Wednesday morning that credits the Senate bill with reducing budget deficits by about $2.2 trillion through 2021, nearly three times the $850 billion credited to the Boehner bill on Tuesday.
In all fairness, there are some reasons and mitigating factors for the disparity, and “Not all is entirely good news for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,”
Read more here
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Original post:
In “Boehner’s Wool, Your Eyes,” Prairie Weather reports that:
House Speaker John Boehner’s new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees, the repeal of health reform’s coverage expansions, or wholesale evisceration of basic assistance programs for vulnerable Americans. The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.
This, according to Robert Greenstein, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, who adds “This may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. The mathematics are inexorable.”
Now it turns out that Boehner’s math is not only inexorable but also shoddy.
The Washington Post has just reported that House Republicans are having to delay a vote on their much-touted bill to lift the debt ceiling as they are scrambling to fix their math problems after CBO analysts said that Boehner’s plan would only create $850 billion in savings as opposed to Boehner’s claimed and sought-after $1.2 trillion.
Boehner had spent much of Tuesday furiously rallying support for his two-step plan to avert a potential default, even though Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared the proposal “dead on arrival” in his chamber and the White House issued a veto threat.
Because of the snafu, the vote, originally scheduled for Wednesday, could now happen Thursday or Friday
Read more about this development here.
