CBO gives BHO the green light on health care reform

There's a very, very good chance that ObamaCare will become law now.

Most congressmen sitting on the fence are Blue Dog Democrats who were waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to score the new reconciliation bill. The fiscally conservative Dems had two requests: They wanted the total bill to weigh in under $1 trillion and they wanted it to reduce the deficit over the next ten years. Moments ago, the CBO released its final analysis.

Senior Democratic aides Thursday provided a snapshot of what they say the Congressional Budget Office has found after evaluating the latest revised version of the health care bill — including the package of fixes.

House Democrats say the legislation will cost $940 billion over 10 years and will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion in that first decade.

As has been repeated at length and chronicled here, none of this is true. ObamaCare is chock full of double accounting and financial tricks that have led many to compare it to Bernie Madoff. The CBO can only grade the bill that's put in front of them. They're forbidden from making even common sense predictions outside of the language of the bill. Somehow Pelosi and company managed to twist the bill's provisions enough to squeeze out a cost estimate below $1 trillion.

It's still impossible to know what will happen, but it seems almost certain that some wavering Blue Dogs will finally fall in line with Pelosi. It's much easier to vote for a $940 billion bill than a $1 trillion bill -- as the blogger Allahpundit pointed out yesterday, it's why things are priced at $99.99 rather than $100.00. The Hill's whip count found that the bill would fail 207-224 yesterday, but those numbers are highly speculative and likely to change today. House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn has already said, "We are absolutely giddy" over the CBO numbers. If the Democrats finally do have the votes, we could see a final House vote as early as this weekend.