Roll Call reported late Thursday night on the Congressional Budget Office's tally on what taxpayers will pay for Pelosi's health care solution. While she told the press it would be less than $894,000,000,000, here's what Roll Call says the CBO's numbers show:
The House Democratic health care reform bill will cost $1.055 trillion over the next decade but will still slash the federal deficit overall by $104 billion, according to a preliminary Congressional Budget Office score released late Thursday.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had touted the bill as costing $894 billion when she released it online earlier in the day, but that number nets out $167 billion in new pay-or-play taxes on individuals and businesses. Pelosi's office had also said the bill would cut the deficit by $30 billion, but the CBO score came in much better.
The $1.055 trillion cost is offset by $740 billion in new taxes and revenue and a net $426 billion in cuts in spending, largely in Medicare.
The CBO also estimated that the deficit would continue to shrink slightly in the second decade after the bill is adopted, a key issue for many moderate Democrats, although it said that any estimates that far out have considerable uncertainty.
