Tag: Congressional Budget Office

Conservatives scramble to spin CBO analysis showing clear benefits of minimum wage increase

AlterNet logoEver since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the United States’ first national minimum wage in 1938, there have been Republicans and fiscal conservatives insisting that minimum wages are a job killer. FDR, however, told Republicans to relax — a mandatory 25 cents per hour wouldn’t destroy the U.S. economy or hamper the success of his New Deal — and 81 years later, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study is showing that increasing the national minimum wage to $15 per hour would be economically beneficial. Naturally, fiscal conservatives are scrambling to spin the study to their liking.

The benefits, according to the CBO: Americans living belong the poverty line would see a 5.3% earnings increase, and wages would rise for up to 27.3 million workers. Workers already making more than $15 per hour would likely see their wages rise as well.

That’s the positive part of the CBO’s cost/benefit analysis, which also found that under a $15 minimum wage, Americans would be paying about 0.3% more for goods and services. Business owners would see a higher overhead if they started paying employees more.

View the complete July 11 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

CBO: Insurance Market Stabilization Impact Null If Mandate Repealed

The following article by Joe Williams was posted on the Roll Call website November 29, 2017:

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Legislation from the duo at the helm of the Senate health panel would do little to improve the number of uninsured individuals if the mandate created by the 2010 health law is repealed, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

A repeal of the mandate — which requires individuals to purchase insurance or pay a yearly fine — is currently included in the GOP bill to overhaul the U.S. tax code. Continue reading “CBO: Insurance Market Stabilization Impact Null If Mandate Repealed”

Senate Democrats shine light on health bill’s longer-term effect on Medicaid

The following article by Amy Goldstein was posted on the Washington Post website June 29, 2017:

In asking the Congressional Budget Office to take a longer view of Senate Republicans’ troubled health-care plan, the chamber’s Democrats maneuvered to train a spotlight on exactly what the GOP has sought to bury.

The Better Care Reconciliation Act relies on the time-honored political strategy of pressing a bill’s most profound effects years into the future — in this case, in severely constricting the main source of public health insurance for poor and vulnerable Americans.

Until Thursday, that scenario had been cloaked in arcane legislative language about per-capita caps and varying inflation adjustments. What Congress’s nonpartisan budget scorekeepers did, at the prodding of the Senate Finance Committee’s senior Democrat, is make clear that the GOP legislation would squeeze federal Medicaid spending by 35 percent by the end of two decades, compared with current law. Continue reading “Senate Democrats shine light on health bill’s longer-term effect on Medicaid”