Congressional Budget Office Says Finance Committee Proposal Will Reduce Deficit by $81 Billion

President Obama promised that any health care reform bill he signed would not add to the national debt--"not one dime." Today the Congressional Budget Office declared that the proposed bill from the Senate Finance Committee would fulfill his promise and reduce the deficit by $81 billion over ten years. It would cost $823 billion in those same ten years; a previous iteration was costed out at $900 billion. A huge sigh of relief could be heard from the capitol. Perhaps this scoring will assure support of the bill from fiscally conservative Democrats, and, who knows, maybe win over one Republican.

You can read the Washington Post coverage here, and read the CBO's report here. Healthcare for America Now notes a paragraph on page 6 indicating that the bill's health care co-ops (its substitute for a government-run public option), would have a negligible effect:

"The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments. As a result, CBO estimates that of the $6 billion in federal funds that would be made available, about $3 billion would be spent over the 2010–2019 period."

In other words, the CBO projects that the government would not even be able to give away the money it had allocated for co-ops.