News You Could Have Used Redux

Oh, we're learning a lot these days. Here's Alan Greenspan, talking to Jake Tapper (H/T: Captain Ed) about Congressional Budget Office scoring of Obamacare:

TAPPER: The president signed massive health care reform legislation into law a few weeks ago. You have expressed concern about the legislation, as it was making its way through the process, about whether or not it did enough to contain costs. What did you think about the final legislation? Does it contain costs enough?
GREENSPAN: Well, the CBO, incidentally, Congressional Budget Office, which is really a first-rate operation, says that it does. The problem is not their estimates, but the range of potential error in those estimates.

"Range of potential error," you say? Tell us more, Mr. Greenspan:

And when you're dealing with an economy in which debt is becoming -- federal debt is becoming ever increasingly a problem, it strikes me that when you're dealing with public policy and you're in a position where you have to ask yourself, "What happens if we are wrong?"

Our solons are not very good at imagining that they are wrong, but let's go with it. Tell us more, former acolyte of Ayn Rand:

In other words, in the case now, where our buffer between our capacity to borrow and our actual debt is narrowing, for the first time, I think, in the American history, there's a question, supposing we are wrong on the cost estimates, and, indeed, they are actually much higher than the best estimates can generate, the consequences are very severe, whereas if they are too high, it's very easy to adjust.

The consequences are very severe? Really? Who knew? (Don't all raise your hands at once, audience. But I digress.) But what is the likelihood of that, Mr. Greenspan?

So I think it's -- it's -- there's an issue over and above the question of what's the best cost estimate. There's a policy strategy here which I think requires us to lean in an ever more conservative area with respect to judging...

Hmmm. So what does that mean? Tapper asks the question and gets a response that ought to leave us all a little queasy.

TAPPER: So it might have been too rosy, the projections, you're saying?

GREENSPAN: Possibly. I don't know that. But I do know that the probability that it might be is much higher than we would like.

Let me translate that for you. Greenspan really means, yes the projections were baked wind. But we knew that, didn't we? So that shouldn't be surprising.

Here's something else that might not surprise this audience, but should really shake up the rubes. Byron York has been doing a little digging on the matter. Take it away, Max Baucus:

In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years, "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle-income class is left behind." The new healthcare legislation, Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

Some who heard Baucus's speech though his style was halting and jumbled because he'd had a few highballs before addressing the body. In vino veritas and all. But don't you wonder how Max knows these things? Turns out he's not the only one who has a different view of what ObamaCare is designed to do. Howard Dean, M.D., has offered his diagnosis:

At about the same time, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate, said the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

You need to do some redistribution, huh? Well, I guess that's right. Every swindler I've ever heard of has been quite keen to redistribute wealth. I posted that picture of Howard Dean because it looks like he's landing a punch. If you feel like your jaw hurts, now you know why. And if you want a little music to go with this post, here you go.