Kennedy-Dodd 2.0 and the CBO

Greg D'Angelo / July 07, 2009

Three weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the Kennedy-Dodd health reform bill. CBO estimated that Title I of the draft legislation alone would have added $1 trillion to the federal deficit while only extending coverage to 16 million of the uninsured. The score sent the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee back to the drawing board.

Although Democrats on the HELP committee pledged to be bipartisan and transparent as they reworked the bill, those promises were broken late last week. While the Senate was out of town and most Americans were preparing for the 4th of July holiday, Democrats on the HELP committee decided to release the second piece of their plan in the wee hours of the night, along with an updated CBO score of the bill. (more…)