{"id":1632,"date":"2012-04-11T14:42:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T18:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2012-04-11T14:42:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T18:42:02","slug":"about-the-affordable-care-act-and-the-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/04\/about-the-affordable-care-act-and-the-deficit\/","title":{"rendered":"About The Affordable Care Act And The Deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The current law baseline assumes the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts, it assumes the spending sequester will take effect, it assumes huge Medicare cuts that Congress will never permit, and much more. If we follow current law, we don\u2019t really have a deficit problem. No one believes we will follow current law. If they did, they wouldn\u2019t worry about deficits.<\/p>\n<p>But Blahous\u2019s baseline takes that much further: If we follow his assumptions, soon enough, we don\u2019t even have deficits. By 2050, we\u2019re a few percentage points away from surpluses. No one believes that, either. But a bunch of folks are willing to pretend they believe that for the purposes of making the Affordable Care Act look fiscally irresponsible.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<script id=\"widget-embed-script-68646e516a8462c311128094a2b031e3-5943\" type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/crfb.org\/embed-widgets\/68646e516a8462c311128094a2b031e3-5943\/embed\/\"><\/script><br \/>\nvia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/ezra-klein\/post\/the-bizarre-baseline-that-obamacares-opponents-are-using--in-one-graph\/2012\/04\/11\/gIQAj4cUAT_blog.html?wprss=rss_ezra-klein\">The bizarre baseline that Obamacare\u2019s opponents are using&#8211;in one graph &#8211; The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The current law baseline assumes the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts, it assumes the spending sequester will take effect, it assumes huge Medicare cuts that Congress will never permit, and much more. If we follow current law, we don\u2019t really have a deficit problem. No one believes we will follow current law. If&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,22],"tags":[125,69,70,206,1066],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}