By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The next big shoe to drop in the health care debate after last week's Supreme Court ruling is an updated cost estimate from Congress' chief scorekeepers, which could tip the massive program into the red.
Just this week, several brand-new reasons have emerged for repealing Obamacare. Like proper, government-designed straitjackets, they come in three sizes: hefty, huge and humongous. The hefty reason to repeal Obamacare arrived just in time for the April 17 tax-filing deadline.
Stirring up an old fight over whether President Obama's health care overhaul will ease or exacerbate the government's deficit, a Republican expert on benefit programs said Tuesday that the law will add billions more to the debt than projected.
The government could hit that trigger if it has to pay out more insurance subsidies in the exchange, said Mr. Blahous, who has been a harsh critic of the way the CBO calculates the cost of the bill.
"People haven't fully internalized how much of a monkey wrench this court ruling has thrown into the finances of the legislation," said Chuck Blahous, a research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center and a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare.
