Beacon Street Journal

More bad news for Democrats’ frantic plan to ram universal health care through Congress in the next three weeks. The organization that initially was responsible for derailing the Obama single payer, universal health care freight train has put another nail in its coffin. From the Washington Post:

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose “the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a signficant amount.”

“On the contrary,” Elmendorf said, “the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.”

The well respected, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which put a preliminary price tag on Obamacare that topped $1 trillion, has now taken one of Obama’s many policy non sequitirs, namely that the way to control Medicare costs is to incur an additional trillion dollars to the already burgeoning federal deficit, and stood it on its head:

Though President Obama and Democratic leaders have said repeatedly that reining in the skyrocketing growth in spending on government health programs such as Medicaid and Medicare is their top priority, the reform measures put forth so far would not fulfill their pledge to “bend the cost curve” downward, Elmendorf said. Instead, he said, “The curve is being raised.”

Ouch! That statement is sure to put a dent in the President’s credibility, which has already eroded significantly by virtue of the dismal failure of the $787 billion “stimulus” package.

In addition, the leader of fiscally conservative Democratic members of the House says he now has the votes to kill the health care plan being hatched in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Somehow I don’t think we will see a health care package coming out of Congress within the next few weeks.