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The Obama Administration Threatened To Veto Parts Of Its Own Health Care Bill
 The Obama administration threatened to veto parts of its own health care bill after budget scorekeepers found that the package would add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending. After it becomes a bill, can a president then veto any part of it? Press was always on Bush because he wrote so many signing statements (his thoughts on the bill) President Obama's budget office charged Congress with finding $115 billion in spending cuts or tax increases to offset the price tag hike. The figure approached the amount of money the Congressional Budget Office previously estimated the law would save, and pushed the total 10-year cost of the package past $1 trillion. It comes after a separate Medicare office report found the bill would raise spending by about 1 percent over the next decade. But the Office of Management and Budget stood by the administration's original claims that the law would reduce the deficit and tasked Congress with making sure that happens — or else. "The Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion in the first decade, and that will not change unless Congress acts to change it," budget office spokesman Ken Baer said. "If these authorizations are funded, they must be offset somewhere else in the discretionary budget. The president has called for a non-security discretionary spending freeze, and he will enforce that with his veto pen." The Congressional Budget Office said the added spending includes $10 billion to $20 billion in administrative costs to federal agencies carrying out the law, as well as $34 billion for community health centers and $39 billion for Indian health care. The costs were not reflected in earlier estimates by the budget office, although Republican lawmakers strenuously argued that they should have been. Part of the reason is technical: the additional spending is not mandatory, leaving Congress with discretion to provide the funds in follow-on legislation — or not. Congressional estimators also said they simply had not had enough time to run the numbers. Costs could go higher, because the legislation authorizes several programs without setting specific funding levels. The health care law provides coverage to more than 30 million people who are uninsured, offering tax credits to help them purchase health insurance through new competitive markets that will open for business in 2014. When Congress passed the bill in March, the CBO estimated the coverage expansion would cost $938 billion over 10 years, while reducing the federal deficit by $143 billion. "If Congress were to approve all of this new discretionary funding authorized in the health care bill, almost all of the administration's highly touted savings would be made null and void," said Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee. Posted by: Beavis 2010-05-12 |
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