The Washington Free Beacon's Ellison Barber appeared on Fox News Friday to discuss the Congressional Budget Office's "quiet" signal it can no longer predict what the effects of Obamacare will be on the budget.
"This is significant because you have the CBO saying we actually can't tell from the majority of the provisions, we can't tell you what what we think the long-term overall budget impacts of the law are going to be," Barber said. "The reason why they're saying they're unable to tell based on these provisions is there have been a lot of delays. You think about the employer mandate, which has been delayed twice now. That is something that was supposed to be a big tax revenue generator, because they were going to take the money from businesses for the penalties. The delays they have now, that's going to prevent the government from collecting somewhere around $2 billion in 2016."
A major selling point of the law was Obama's oft-repeated promise that the law would cut the deficit over the next decade. Then again, several of Obama's promises about the law have been proven entirely false. Barber also laid out the effects of what another potential missed promise could have on vulnerable red-state Democrats fighting to stay in office in 2014.
"They felt that their representatives had misled them when they passed this initially in terms of, if you like your doctor, you can keep it," she said. "The fact now that they don't know the long-term overall budget impact, I think that emboldens the narrative that maybe they were misled. "