The results in this paper are based on the specific tax policy proposals of Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. The economy improves under each plan as compared to the CBO baselinethat assumes that all of the Bush tax cuts disappear. While bothcandidates plan to reduce taxes compared to this scenario and eachachieves his stated goal, their approaches are quite different.
the medicaid expansions more carefully. this is a bill that looks first to the poor and gets it to them. it doesn t try to do one size fits all. it cuts things off at a lower level of income. it s targeted on exactly that problem. the reality in the budget is this. we re going to have a trillion dollar deficit every year and the driving force is affordable care act, medicaid, medicare, social security. i don t agree. that s the cbo baseline. all i ll say is this, the best ad that the democrats have against this bill is just the bill. if they just tell the american people what s in the bill, i guarantee you there s going to be mass opposition to what s there. to say to them we re going to continue to tell you you can do something that we can t because they can t sustain social security, medicare, medicaid and affordable. they cannot. you know that. i want people to read the bill, look at billion.
we should take an educated guess about what the future might hold but not treat them as some kind of holy writ carved in stone tablets. the cbo has a track record of overestimating the effects of government directive policies, underestimating the effects of-b market-based policies.ose thei it is one opinion and take it with a grain of salt. to other people think there will be fewer people who will lose their insurance down the road? there may be some kind of erosion and coverage, whether it is an absolute numbers, working off of imperfect cbo baseline. maybe different insurance that they don t consider adequate. if you get a richer, more liquid market with more choices and competition you ll get a healthy market over time. paul: jason, the politics ofa this, what damage does it do? show is right that the gop has a particle problem with his
tablets. the cbo has a track record of overestimating the effects of government-directed policies, underestimating the effects of market-based policies. so it s one opinion, and take it with a grain of salt. paul: but do other people think there ll be fewer people who will lose their insurance down the road here? certainly, there may be some kind of erosion in coverage whether it s in absolute numbers working off an imperfect cbo baseline, maybe different types of insurance that the congressional budget office doesn t considered a adequate. but certainly, if you get a richer, more liquid market with more choices, more competition, you re likely to get a healthier market over time. paul: jason, the politics of this, what damage does it do? that s the problem. i think joe s absolutely right, but the gop still has a political problem with this number being out there and
gregg, what you really need to concentrate on in any of these 10 years budgets is the first year. in the first year president obama s budget spends $160 billion more than the cbo baseline, increases the deficit by $128 billion more than the cbo baseline. let s face it. really what is the president really is proposing, increasing spending and increasing the deficit that first year. then extrapolate next 10 years. that is what his proposal looks like to me. more increased spending. more increases taxes and unfortunately more increased deficits. gregg: but for the very first time the president is putting in writing here a concession on social security to reduce the growth of social security by using a different inflation measure for calculating cost of living increases, the so-called chained cpi that gives a lower measure of inflation. would republicans, in exchange for that, be willing to agree to some revenue tax increases? well, first of all, i