Thank god (or whoever) that the GOP on the whole is comprised of idiots that don’t have a clue about 95% of what they jump on to pass. I suspect that if an honest (honest in terms of getting honest answers) survey were to be taken with all members of the house, that dug into defining exactly how much or what they know about healthcare as pertains to their bill they support, there would be very little that they have a clue about. It’s beyond frustrating to see republican politicians saying things in the media and at townhalls that are pure unadulterated BS, they say the things that are absolutely untrue. The “we want the cost of healthcare down, we want people to have choices” nevermind that the choices are way more expensive to where millions of people will not be able to afford them.
But...what they all know about is tax cuts, they know more about what the tax cuts are and who they benefit, they know what the circumstances are in terms of who they affect. That said my guess is that in general their ignorance about that subject is so full of rhetorical bullshit that it would be impossible for any of them including Ryan to have a fact based debate on tax cuts for the wealthy.
Enter the CBO evaluation, or score as it is referred to. Where the bullshit gets shoveled out with a backhoe, where rhetorical, nonsensical, and purely incorrect premises can be instantly corrected in real time.
It is their intent to use procedures that have rules that they are pretty far from being close to adhering to. Using budget reconciliation tactics has stipulations requiring budget neutrality. They want to pass a bill that will add hundreds of billions to the debt, that will increase the deficit. Not only do they operate on an incorrect belief that trickle down economics works, and that giving the wealthy creates jobs and revenue, they fail to say that while the wealthy get the breaks, the revenue is supposed to be created from working class people.
I don’t know what people’s awareness of what the GOP’s use of the CBO has been. Nothing should be voted on until the CBO has had the chance to fully weigh in on any major legislation. Yet the GOP would rather there were no CBO at all, they do not want accuracy, facts, and truthful perspectives on the garbage they want to ignorantly pass on behalf of corporations and the wealthiest greedsters.
Go back a bit in time, during Obama’s first term the GOP wanted to go back to their ever constant dream of less taxes for the wealthy. They wanted the CBO to weigh into the issue and provide substantiation to how trickle down economics could have positive influences. I’m sure the game plan was to take the report and use every part where there was any aspect of positive influence regardless if the concept proves to be an overall fail due to other quantifiable facets. The GOP made more mileage out of the fact that the CBO was going to be validating the concept of trickle down economics than had ever been proven or disproven before, the past analysis overwhelmingly failing to prove it had ever worked or could ever work. Reagan’s run at is is acknowledged by everyone but the right as a pure failed exercise in tax cuts, followed by the Bush example that turned a budget surplus into record budget deficits.
So what would a party do if the CBO reported negatively on tax cuts as applies to trickle down theories? An intelligent party would forget trying to push an idea that simply wasn’t proving out, but not the GOP. They literally wanted to expunge the record of this report. They didn’t agree with it despite it having been done in a thorough and fact based scenario modeling mode. So despite it being the GOP that ordered the report, they demanded that the CBO not file this report. If I’m not mistaken the reporting at that time was saying that congress had never suppressed a CBO report in that manner before.
Fast forward to Trump taking office, the GOP being as excited about anything they wanted to do being approved by Trump. As the CBO was scoring the miniscule and broad GOP concepts as they were being touted, the CBO was reporting on the ten year forecast on the debt impact as well as the real time deficit. The CBO informed the CBO that in future scoring they did not want those ten year forecasts reported, that they would be implementing cuts in other areas that would negate those, so they were not relevant. The GOP is caught up in a mode of passing garbage that they acknowledge will take fixes to make work financially. Their idea of fixes would be to privatize social security, medicaid, veteran’s care, there isn’t anything they don’t want privatized, and none of it saves anything, it all gets far more expensive. The government continues to pay, but private corporations are the beneficiaries.
Add to that the concept that no industry needs to be regulated, that they don’t need oversight to keep them from fraudulent and excessive billing, and this is an out of control train wreck in motion.
Everything about the process of legislating the ideas the GOP is trying to jam through needs to be done with accurate and truthful oversight, has to have a better degree of deliberation.
This is an illegitimate administration in it’s entirety, it needs to be frozen as far as further damage, and the crap that has been jammed into place needs the blanket repeals that happened toward Obama’s policies being repealed at an idiotic pace.