Chuck Blahous of the Hudson Institute writing in Politico makes a key point about CBO’s devastating report: it is worse than you thought. The media seized on the $239 billion that would be added to the deficit if ObamaCare passed. But the real number is $820 billion — the estimated (and likely lowball) calculation over 10 years. He concludes:

The representation has been made that health care reform is the key to repairing the long-term budget outlook — more important than Social Security reform, more important than all other entitlement reforms, more important than all other spending reforms combined. If health care reform fails to fix any of these fiscal problems — instead adding enormously to projected deficits — then the government will have created an irreparable fiscal problem. In this nightmare scenario, health care reforms far worsen the outlook, both in the near term and the long term, and large tax increases are needed simply to offset this further damage, even before beginning the serious work of repairing our dire current-law fiscal outlook.

[. . .]

Whatever happened to health care reform being the key to fixing our long-term finances? We all agree that the status quo in health care financing is unsustainable. Exactly what is the economic argument for making this dreadful situation worse by $800 billion in the near term and by trillions over the long term? The president’s words are very clear: He has promised not to sign health care reforms that add one dime to the deficit. He most definitely did not say, “I will sign health care reforms that add enormously to the deficit and impose large tax increases to offset that.”

The public and the press need to demand that Congress meet the president’s explicitly stated standard. This means repairing not a $239 billion hole but an $820 billion one in the current legislation.

No wonder the Blue Dogs are howling about the House Democratic leadership’s bill. It plainly takes us in the opposite direction from fiscal sobriety, which leads to another question: Why is the president supporting something that undermines his stated objections? Two possibilities come to mind. He might be as uninformed about the bill as he is about tonsil surgery and the Cambridge police. Alternatively, all the talk of budget control might be disingenuous, a sop to moderates but ultimately nonserious (this theory explains why he would sign on to a $787 billion stimulus and a $3.5 trillion budget).

Whatever the explanation for his embrace of a bill more fiscally irresponsible than anything yet attempted in his presidency (no small feat), the fact remains that if one cares about the “unsustainable” debt (another Obama phrase), then ObamaCare is a nonstarter.