Money For Nothing: CBO Reports That Stimulus Doubled the Debt

So much for that idea.

Not only has the so-called "stimulus" doubled the debt, but the country got jack-squat in return. Except, of course, consistently high unemployment, a real estate market in shambles, and gas and food prices through the roof. Yippee!

If you think the Dumbocrats have learned their lesson yet, you better think again.

Is it 2012 yet?

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that President Obama’s economic stimulus program helped nearly double U.S. debt.

The 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook, released Wednesday morning, reports that the “the combination of automatic budgetary responses” and Obama’s stimulus “had a profound impact on the federal budget.” According to CBO projections, before Obama’s stimulus became law, federal debt equaled 36 percent of GDP and was projected to decline slightly over the next few years. Instead, thanks in large part to the stimulus, debt reached 62 percent of GDP by 2010.

The wonderful news doesn't end there. Keep reading.

Cross-posted.

'The Curve is Being Raised'

It's starting to look a lot like the Congressional Budget Office isn't down with nationalizing health care.

The director of the Congressional Budget Office issued a warning to Democrats Thursday that their health care proposals would raise costs, not lower them.

One day after a Senate panel approved its version of the health care reform plan, the first committee to do so, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf gave a dose of bad medicine to a separate committee.

Asked by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., whether costs would be lowered -- also known as "bending the curve" -- Elmendorf responded: "The curve is being raised."

Subsidies to help uninsured people would raise federal health care spending, which is already growing at an unsustainable rate, Elmendorf explained at the hearing. The Medicare and Medicaid cuts that lawmakers have offered to pay for the coverage expansion aren't big enough to offset the cost trend, particularly in the long term, he said.

House Republican Leader John Boehner seized on the comments, calling on Democrats to scrap their plans in light of the assessment.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called it a "wake up call" for Democrats.

Anybody with a lick of sense knows that this will escalate costs, not lower them. Medicare cost some 900% more than originally projected cause they did not take into account the increased consumption of services when the services themselves were perceived to be "free." A basic principle of microeconomics is that people consume resources at their marginal value; in other words, what does it cost me to to consume the next unit? If the cost is perceived to be zero, folks will value it as such and consume it in the same light.

The Democrats need to put down Das Capital and try reading Adam Smith for a change.

CBO Estimates Senate Bill to Reduce Illegal Immigration by Only 25%

As if we needed another reason to kill this bill.

The Senate's immigration bill will only reduce illegal immigration by about 25 percent a year, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report, Stephen Dinan will report Tuesday in The Washington Times.

The bill's new guest-worker program could lead to at least 500,000 more illegal immigrants within a decade, said the report from the CBO, which said in its official cost estimate that it assumes some future temporary workers will overstay their time in the plan, adding up to a half-million by 2017 and 1 million by 2027.

"We anticipate that many of those would remain in the United States illegally after their visas expire," CBO said of the guest-worker program, which would allow 200,000 new workers a year to rotate into the country.

And in a blow to President Bush's timetable, the CBO said the "triggers" -- setting up the verification system, deploying 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents to duty and constructing hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers -- won't be met until 2010.

I would hedge a guess and say that estimate of 1 million by 2027 is very modest.

More from Captain's Quarters, Hot Air, Confederate Yankee, Don Surber.

Tax Day

Not that you need a reminder to file your tax return if you haven't already, instead check out Tax Day Winners & Losers from the New York Post.

Next time you hear the liberals and Democrats demagoguing the tax issue, shove these numbers down their throats.

According to a recent Congressional Budget Office report, for instance, the top 40 percent of Americans pay 99.1 percent of all income taxes - while the bottom 40 percent pay nothing at all.

And economist Gary Shilling reports that more than half all Americans - some 53 percent - receive some form of income from government.

Indeed, notes the Tax Foundation, the poorest fifth of Americans wind up getting $8.21 in government spending and services for each dollar of state, local and federal taxes they pay.

The highest earners, by comparison, get 41 cents back on each dollar spent on taxes. Top earners thus collectively kick down as much as $1.53 trillion a year to the bottom 60 percent.

Note, too, that high earners actually picked up a bigger share of the load after President Bush's tax cuts took effect.

Indeed, the richest 1 percent now shoulders 36.7 percent of the nation's income-tax bills.

Democrats have long argued the system is unfair.

The question is: for whom?