Fudging the Facts on Health Care and Deficits

Today's column by Joe Conason is a must-read:

[T]he Republican leaders in Congress are now insisting on their own "facts" concerning health care and deficits, which directly contradict the careful studies of the Congressional Budget Office. They have gone so far as to denigrate CBO, among the most respected agencies in Washington since its founding in 1974, by accusing its analysts of using "rigged" assumptions to reach its conclusions.

Why? The agency's conclusions are irritating to the Republicans, especially Speaker John Boehner and Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, because the CBO found that health care reform will reduce the federal deficit by more than $230 billion during the first decade after it goes into effect—and then by trillions of dollars in the decades that follow.

...The present Speaker and his cronies know that their partisan attack on the CBO is patently hypocritical. Unless afflicted with early Alzheimer's, they can surely remember that two years ago, the Republicans and other opponents of reform were crowing loudly because the CBO had found that the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill would increase the deficit. Although Democrats grumbled, they accepted the CBO findings and rewrote the bill extensively to ensure that it reduced the deficit, as promised.