CBO reports: tiny bump or major roadblock?

As we suspected might happen, last week's initial efforts by the Congressional Budget Office to score the Senate HELP Committee's first draft of health care reform created quite a stir.

Democrats blanched a bit at the CBO's preliminary estimate that the draft proposal would add $1 trillion to the deficit over ten years, while reducing, but not eliminating, the number of uninsured. Republicans saw an opening, and pounced. According to the New York Times, criticisms at the initial mark up session last Wednesday ranged from mild cautions that the Committee's pace was "too fast to do an adequate job" (Enzi, R-WY) to dismissive comparisons (from Sen. Gregg, R-NH) of the bill's drafters to Rube Goldberg, Karl Marx and (smackdown!) Ira Magaziner (a key architect of President Clinton's failed attempt at reform in 1993-94).

Meanwhile, Senator Baucus (D-MT), confronted by the $1.6 trillion price tag CBO attached to his bill, has apparently delayed his target date for mark up of the Senate Finance Committee's bill until after the 4th of July. Some warn that this delay makes chances for August passage of a Senate bill much less likely.

So, are these events a bump in the road or a major roadblock for health care reform? Obviously, time will tell, but they may well be just a bump. They may even prove to be a blessing in disguise. Given the worries Americans have voiced in recent opinion polls over the size of the federal deficit, a reform package that includes cost saving (or revenue producing) proposals that the CBO can endorse stands a greater chance of passage.