To the surprise of nobody to the right of Chris Matthews, the CBO reported yesterday that Democrats are double-counting savings in their so-called “reform” bill.  Essentially they claim money as saved in Medicare costs but allow government to spend that money on other things – while just counting the savings.

The accounting minutiae are somewhat complicated, but explained reasonably well HERE and HERE.  The error, about $300 billion over 10 years, means that the current bill, even with its massive up-front tax hikes, will add about $170 billion to the deficit (and that’s accepting the Democrats’ unrealistic assumptions) rather than the initial claim that it will cut $130 billion.  In all likelihood, the numbers will be MUCH worse as people change their behavior to avoid costs or get their free lunch.

Although I have been somewhat tough on the CBO in these pages from time to time, it is clear that CBO Director Doug Elmendorf is tired of the Democrats’ shenanigans, gaming the CBO score for political purposes.  In his letter to Senator Jeff Sessions, Mr. Elmendorf was as devastating to Democrats’ claims as someone in an utterly non-partisan position could be.

Here’s Senator Sessions on TV laying out his discussion with Elmendorf:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9QEkUQLeQ

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) called the Democrats’ claims of savings “Madoff Accounting".

This is very big news just hours before the final Senate vote on Harry Reid’s “legislative train wreck” that is health care “reform".  But at the end of the day, it’s very hard to see any Democratic Senator changing his or her vote.

Just when the Democrats thought the political ramifications of being forced by Harry Reid and Barack Obama to support a bill that is not even popular with the liberal base (because the bill isn’t socialist enough), it has now gotten even worse since several of them has said that they will not support a bill that is not at least deficit-neutral, if not better.  Putting aside the fact that all of the bills will be much worse in terms of deficit than the CBO score, now they can’t even honestly claim a CBO score that doesn’t increase the deficit.

Democrats in Congress are being put in the position of having to lie – transparently, obviously lie – because of the political demands of their party’s leadership and the brass knuckles Chicago politics of Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.

Any Democrat who claimed to support fiscal responsibility and is thinking of supporting this bill at its final vote can already see the campaign ads which will be run against him or her at the next election: “You lie!”