Is Orrin Hatch the Smartest Senator in the World?

Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA

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If you want a good example of how budget scoring from a baseline can produce bizarre results, look no further than the proposed funding extension for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Back in October, CBO estimated that the net cost of the extension would be $8.2 billion over ten years. That broke down like this:

  • Cost of CHIP: $49 billion
  • Medicaid savings: $15.1 billion
  • Obamacare savings: $19.2 billion
  • Revenue increases: $6.7 billion

But now we have a new estimate, and the net cost is only $0.8 billion. Huzzah! But this is not because CHIP will cost any less. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Cost of CHIP: $48.4 billion
  • Medicaid savings: $14.8 billion
  • Obamacare savings: $26.4 billion
  • Revenue increases: $6.6 billion

Everything is about the same except that funding CHIP now increases the savings from Obamacare by a lot more. But why? Why is it that over the course of only three months, funding CHIP will suddenly save Obamacare $7 billion more than it used to?

Well, it’s all about the elimination of the individual mandate. First of all, the CBO boffins figure that this will cause Obamacare premiums to go up. This in turn means that the savings from enrolling a child in CHIP instead of the more expensive Obamacare is higher.

Second, they also figure that more parents will decide to forego insurance thanks to the higher premiums. Now pay close attention. If CHIP goes away, some parents will decide to buy into Obamacare anyway because they want their kids to be insured. That costs the government money since it subsidizes Obamacare. With the higher premiums, it will cost the government even more. Thus, extending CHIP, and preventing parents from enrolling in Obamacare, will save more money.

Did you get all that? If you didn’t, don’t worry. The bottom line is that by making Obamacare worse and more expensive, the savings from moving people off Obamacare and into CHIP gets bigger. Pretty awesome, isn’t it?

The net result of this is that extending CHIP funding will cost essentially nothing. That’s sure going to make it easier to pass. Did Orrin Hatch know this all along? Is that why he kept saying he wasn’t worried about getting CHIP reauthorized? I kinda doubt it, but you never know. If he did understand all this, he’s one smart cookie, isn’t he?

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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