Democrats' Plot: $245 Billion "Doc Fix"

This is another sleazy move by the sleazy Democrats, more lies about health care and deficit neutrality.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats want to give doctors a $245 billion sweetener that helps ensure their critical support for a health care overhaul bill. Next up: Trying to explain how they could do it without breaking President Barack Obama's promise that health legislation won't increase the federal deficit.

Obama reiterated the pledge in a "CBS Evening News" interview Tuesday, saying: "It's got to be deficit neutral. It can't add to our deficits."

So what of the Congressional Budget Office's conclusion that the House bill does add to the deficit?

Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the $245 billion included for doctors -- the approximate 10-year cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don't face big annual pay cuts -- does not have to be counted in the overall cost of the health care bill.

Their only-in-Washington reasoning is that they already decided to exempt it from congressional "pay-as-you-go" rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn't have to be paid for because they decided it doesn't have to be paid for.

The administration also says that since Obama already included the so-called "doc fix" in his 10-year budget proposal, it doesn't have to be counted again in the health overhaul bill.

"It so happens they added that to this piece of legislation, but that's sort of already baked into our fiscal trajectory," White House budget director Peter Orszag said last weekend on "FOX News Sunday."

"We're looking at what's happening with regard to new policy," Orszag added. "And with regard to new policy, this is deficit neutral over the first decade."

Old policy or new, no one disputes that the "doc fix" does in fact add to the deficit. And the administration's position carried no weight with the CBO when it released its analysis of the House Democrats' bill.

The CBO, Congress' nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, said Friday that enacting the legislation "would result in a net increase to the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period." The increase is mostly because of Democrats' failure to pay for the "doc fix," but CBO didn't even bother to entertain the notion that its cost should be excluded.

The response from House Democrats? A slough of triumphant press releases claiming -- misleadingly -- that CBO's estimates backed up their claims that their bill was deficit neutral.

The Dems bribe doctors and then they want the cost of the $245 billion sweetner to be excluded from the federal budget deficit.

Ridiculous.

The notion that Obama has changed Washington politics is a crock.