"You can't just pick and choose the CBO numbers you like or don't like."

[CTyankee]

Howard Dean said that to Mort Zuckerman on Morning Joe today. To which, Zuckerman said, "Sure I can!"

So this is the RW game now. They don't like the CBO scoring of the hcr bill before the Senate because it comes out "wrong" for them.

So now, they're all screaming about how wrong the CBO is and picking it apart. Before, if the scoring went their way, they were all nodding solemnly as if it were Holy Writ.

This is too funny! Do they have any idea how ridiculous they look???:rofl:

[SteppingRazor]

1. I thought Dean did a great job on MJ this morning. I mean, he was no Bill Murray, but he was good.

:)

[DCKit]

2. The party faithful aren't known for their critical thinking. Or their grasp of recent events.

And you can forget history (it doesn't have one of the three Rs in it).

When any RW talking head says any crazy shit on the TeeVee, they simply accept it as fact. It doesn't matter if they were saying exactly the opposite the night before.

[blogslut]

3. It was a fun time

I thought for a minute that Zuckerman was going to stomp his foot through the floor in a Rumplestiltskin rage.

[baldguy]

4. That's why they never asked the CBO to do cost estimates on Single Payer.

[hughee99]

5. They probably look as ridiculous as this guy...

Bill Clinton Chides Reliance On CBO Scoring

"Former President Bill Clinton, himself a victim of an errant Congressional Budget Office score or two, implied today that the agency wasn't connected enough to the real world to know whether programs would save money or not. Speaking a few days after the CBO estimated that the White House's latest "gamechanger," an independent Medicare Advisory Commission to set prices, would save little money over 10 years, Clinton urged policy-makers -- and here he means Democrats -- to not accept the CBO's scores without adding a dollop of common sense. " I recognize that if you're in that budget office, you've got to project the future," Clinton said. But certain programs would realize savings "regardless of whether the mathematical rules they are now up with will prove it or not." He said that those with a stake in changing the system "almost always get the short end of the stick" when it comes to budget projections. "In Washington, we strain a lot of gnats while we''re swallowing camels." Lost in the debate about how much health care reform will cost, Clinton said, is the debate about whether the reforms will work. (I took this to be an implicit criticism of Blue Dog Democrats who focus near-obsessively with the impact of health reform on the deficit and of committee chairs who have imbued the CBO with near mystical powers.)"

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/07/bill_clinton_chides_reliance_on_cbo_scoring.php