Brooks channels Ryan

In an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, David Brooks plays echo to Paul Ryan's summit assessment of the true costs of Obamacare (but no mention of Ryan).  E.g.:

Ryan:

[W]hat has been placed in front of them [the CBO] is a bill that is full of gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors.

Brooks:

They've stuffed the legislation with gimmicks and dodges designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but don't genuinely control runaway spending.

Ryan:

[The Senate bill] does [a] couple of other things. It takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that's really reserved for Social Security. So either we're double-counting them or we don't intend on paying those Social Security benefits.

Brooks:

There is the Social Security dodge. The bill uses $52 billion in higher Social Security taxes to pay for health care expansion. But if Social Security taxes pay for health care, what pays for Social Security?

Ryan:

It takes $72 billion and claims money from the CLASS Act. That's the long-term care insurance program. It takes the money from premiums that are designed for that benefit and instead counts them as offsets.

The Senate Budget Committee chairman [Kent Conrad] said that this is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Brooks:

There is the long-term care dodge. The bill creates a $72 billion trust fund to pay for a new long-term care program. The sponsors count that money as cost-saving, even though it will eventually be paid back out when the program comes on line.

And it goes on, pretty much point for point.  Now Brooks has been critical of the President's approach to health care for quite a while, because he doesn't think it's big enough, "fundamental" enough or change-y enough.  But he's also been on to this cost curve problem all along.  And in some cases, it actually sounds like Ryan might have been channeling him.  E.g.:

Brooks (on the Senate bill, back in December):

The second reason to oppose this bill is that, according to the chief actuary for Medicare, it will cause national health care spending to increase faster.

Ryan:

Well, if you look at your own chief actuary at Medicare, we're bending it [the cost curve] up.

A consensus is building.