Tom Bevan notes that no one—not even New York Times columnist Bob Herbert—believes Obama’s claim that he won’t “add one dime” to the deficit with health-care reform. Bevan writes:

Generically speaking, when someone makes a claim that no one believes it’s characterized as a lie. But the difference between wishful thinking and a lie comes down to intent. Because if Obama really believes his claim then it can’t be considered a lie, just as I wouldn’t technically be guilty of lying if I believed in my heart that a greyhound could outrun a cheetah. What I would be guilty of, however, is gross naivete and wishful thinking. So, depending on what you think of Obama’s intent, the best case scenario is that he’s guilty of wishful thinking while the worst case scenario is that he is intentionally being dishonest and misleading the American people about the financials of his health care plan.

But let’s be clear, there isn’t yet out there any health-care plan whereby “not a dime” would be added to the deficit. None of the Democrats’ plans yet scored by the CBO meet the “not a dime” standard. The White House has not offered one. When you are suggesting a trillion dollars or more in new spending and no equivalent revenue increase, you are, by definition, going to increase the deficit.

This goes beyond wishful thinking. The president can’t give a speech without accusing his opponent of silliness or “making stuff up.” But the biggest lie—yes it’s a lie—is that the president is going to sign a bill to increase coverage for tens of millions of Americans without raising the deficit. As the Washington Post points out, the Senate is still stumped on how to subsidize people we are going to force to buy insurance without running up the tab on health-care reform. (Think about that again: it turns out it is really expensive to force people to do what they don’t want to do or can’t afford to.) Again, no one has figured out how to pay for the expanded coverage.

However many speeches the president gives and whatever invective he tosses at his critics, the central dilemma in the health-care debate remains this: Obama first pitched health-care reform as a means of reducing the deficit and then as a cost-neutral reform. He gave up on the former claim and should stop making the latter. It simply isn’t true.