CBO: Oh yeah, we were wrong about Obamacare, sorry about that...

Before Obamacare became the law of the land, supporters pointed to projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that said the new regulations would cut the federal deficit by $120 billion over ten years. Republicans said that was ridiculous, but the CBO stood by their numbers.

Now, the Republicans have been proven right.

The CBO recently, and rather quietly, admitted they were wrong about Obamacare, in a footnote buried in a recent report on new insurance regulations. Roll Call first caught the admission, which included this statement:

"CBO and JCT can no longer determine exactly how the provisions of the ACA that are not related to the expansion of health insurance coverage have affected their projections of direct spending and revenues,” the CBO wrote. “The provisions that expanded coverage established entirely new programs or components of programs that can be isolated and reassessed. Isolating the incremental effects of those provisions on previously existing programs and revenues four years after enactment of the ACP is not possible.”

This admission is probably of little solace to those Republicans who insisted Obamacare was bad policy, but at the very least, the CBO can now be counted as one sounding the alarm over the impending trainwreck the new law will bring. Estimates by the CBO now say the new regulations could cost over $1 trillion over ten years.

Sadly, Nacy Pelosi was right: we did have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it. There just wasn't anything good to be found.