Let’s look at what the President said about health care reform in his press conference yesterday:

Like energy, this is legislation that must and will be paid for. It will not add to our deficits over the next decade. We will find the money through savings and efficiencies within the health care system — some of which we’ve already announced.

The first sentence is good.  By using “must” and “will be,” he is telling Congress that “not add[ing] to our deficits over the next decade” is a bright line.  It’s only one part of the test of a fiscally responsible bill, and a too-weak test at that.  As JD Foster and some other commenters have pointed out, however, not adding to an already unsustainable future deficit path means you will have left an unacceptable situation unchanged.  It’s even worse, because to offset the new entitlement, Congress will take the politically easiest Medicare and Medicaid spending cuts that would otherwise be used to bring future deficits in line.  They will have swapped the least popular Medicare and Medicaid spending for popular new entitlement spending, making it harder to address this unsustainable spending trend in the future.

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