That’s the opinion of Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, according to the Washington Times. Apparently the updated 10 year budget projections, while trending towards the CBO’s $9.1 Trillion deficit estimate, selectively include and exclude the impacts of proposed legislation:

Holtz-Eakin said that said the Obama administration wrongly assumes it will receive $640 billion in revenue from the creation of a cap-and-trade system for polluters, which would rely on the passage of an energy reform bill that many Democrats oppose, plus another $200 billion from a controversial proposal to tax international businesses. The Obama administration is also counting on the idea that health care reform will not increase the deficit, which some believe is impossible.

What’s more stunning about this? Counting in contributions from Cap and Trade, or trying to pass off projections that the proposed health care reform package will actually lower the budget deficit? A public option that extends benefits to uninsured Americans while creating a massive new bureaucracy is simply unaffordable. Targeted incentives to make health insurance more affordable combined with meaningful tort reform would be more practical and lead to more probable deficit reductions over the longer term.

* Update: Take it away, Greta:

(Youtube video h/t to Below the Beltway)

Just think – According to Fox News the White House confirms it joined the ranks of the folks who flood your in-box with emails claiming you’ve won the Nigerian lottery and that parts of your anatomy just don’t measure up.

Earlier this week, in a classic obfuscation-by-misdirection move, the White House tried to convince the public it wasn’t behind the emails:

The revelation comes after the White House acknowledged this week that people were receiving unsolicited e-mails from the administration about health care reform and suggested the problem was with third-party groups that placed the recipients’ names on the distribution list.

We need answers as to how much taxpayer money, if any, was used to fund this effort. Allahpundit at Hot Air asks the important questions:

Two questions. (1) Did Govdelivery supply any of the e-mail addresses that ended up getting the Axelspam? The White House denies it but it’s still not clear why people who never signed up for their mailing list ended up receiving it. (2) More importantly, do the other pols and agencies that use Govdelivery use it to push items on their ideological agenda or do they limit it to official government business? There’s a big difference between FEMA spending tax money to issue hurricane warnings and The One spending it to push his policy wish list.

One other thing: if this was the Bush administration you can bet that there would be calls for the White House to be prosecuted under various anti-spam laws.

Mr. President, there’s only one way that spam is funny:

* Update: Is GovDelivery throwing Obama under the bus? Is the White House getting a lesson in honesty from the marketplace? Maybe GovDelivery’s executives see the handwriting on the wall and want to distance themselves from negative press and possible legal problems.

In Palin: No health-care reform without tort reform, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air supplements Sarah Palin’s Facebook note on Tort reform with several excellent points:

Defensive medicine comprises as much as 10% of the total cost of American health care. One study puts the average annual cost of defensive medicine as high as $2,000 for a family of four. Estimates range between $100-$178 billion per year of defensive medicine costs.

The referenced study is discussed on the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons website, which points out that:

The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs.

Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopaedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage?

Could tort reform also improve quality of care?

In a recent study of residents across specialties, 81 percent of responding residents said that they view every patient as a potential lawsuit…Assurance behavior, reported by 92 percent of physician respondents, involves ordering tests (particularly imaging tests), performing diagnostic procedures, and referring patients for consultation. Avoidance behavior, reported by 42 percent of physician respondents, includes restricting their practice, eliminating high-risk procedures and procedures prone to complications, and avoiding patients with complex problems or patients perceived as litigious…On the therapeutic side, defensive therapeutic measures such as Caesarean sections or invasive procedures such as breast lump biopsies are accompanied by significant risks to patients and increased healthcare expenditures, not to mention the issues of patient safety.

Defensive medicine consumes time and money and delays patient access to needed, proven therapies. How much human suffering is experienced during these delays?

One final, startling point the AAOS article makes:

Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.

A hidden tax of close to $10,000 annually for a family of 4? That probably covers a major portion of the health insurance premium for such a family.

Today’s Union Leader reports that some NH auto buyers are being asked to cover their promised “cash for clunkers” rebates:

Frustrated with delays, rejections and computer-system crashes, several New Hampshire auto dealers are making car buyers pledge to cover rebates if the federal government doesn’t come through with checks under the Cash for Clunkers program.

Auto dealers say they are doing so because the federal government is a clunker when it comes to sending out rebate checks of $3,500 or $4,500 per car.

Now of course there are associated consumer protection issues and the state of NH is looking into it. Maybe there needs to be some form of protection for the dealers as well.

In Swanzey, the dealership that includes Toyota of Keene is waiting for money from 130 rebates.

Fore some dealers, the IOUs surpass $500,000, (NH Auto Dealers Association President Peter) McNamara said. “For any dealer, $100,000 represents a serious cash-flow issue if you don’t know when it’s going to come in,” he said.

And President Obama’s administration thinks it can manage a nationalized health care system? Reminds me of this guy:

*Update: HotAir reports on the Feds pulling workers away from FAA to staff exploding Cash for Clunkers bureaucracy and adds this cautionary note:

There’s actually a serious risk here that the feds are going to mismanage a simple car-rebate program into bankruptcy. Oh, and more good news: Confirming earlier suspicions, it’s foreign carmakers that are getting the lion’s share of the sales. Exit question: Which is more frightening as an omen for ObamaCare’s future problems? Yesterday’s $2 trillion upwards budget revision or this wheezing canary in the coal mine?

*Update: Mercifully it’s over. Ed Morrissey has a good review of this clunker of a program.

Patterico’s Pontifications post titled White House is Mystified About Health Care contains a quote from an unnamed White House staffer that is priceless:

Another top aide expressed chagrin that a single element in the president’s sprawling health-care initiative has become a litmus test for whether the administration is serious about the issue.

“It took on a life of its own,” he said.

Um, let’s see – it clearly was the centerpiece of the legislation, your town hall proxies like Senator Specter and Speaker Pelosi have pushed it relentlessly, you tried and failed to position the opposition as a well funded insurance company led extremist coalition, you sent in your union thug friends to beat up dissenters, and when the American public raised legitimate objections to your plan you told your supporters to hit back twice as hard.

How could it not take on a life of its own?

From a practical perspective, the answer has to be yes. As Ed Morrissey of Hot Air points out in Dem Senator: Public option is dead; Update: Sebelius video added:

Not only have red-state voters become passionately opposed to government takeover of health care, but independents and even some liberal districts have seen a high degree of anger and fear of losing a system that works for most Americans. When opponents of ObamaCare get cheers in townhall meetings with Rep. Keith Ellison in one of the most liberal districts in America, MN-05, we know that advocates have something to fear from voter backlash in 2010.

The White House has to be looking for a way to back down gracefully, so Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius floated a trial balloon on one of the Sunday AM TV talk shows to test the waters. The far-left reaction must have been swift and intense, and the White House gently “clarified” its position on the issue via email (which must have further infuriated single-payer plan proponents.)

The whole episode has looked amateurish, to be sure, but in an ironic twist of fate the “it’s all about me” President now has several degrees of political freedom:

• He can sign a reform act without the public option, then tell his left-wing supporters that he listened to them, remained steadfast in his support, and that Congress didn’t give him what he wants due to re-election fears. Obama will tell them they should campaign in 2010 for reform-minded candidates (thus throwing some members of the current Congress under the bus.)
• He can sign a reform act without the public option, then tell the nation that the most serious problems in our current health care system have been solved due to his leadership. Obama can then move on to re-establish his tattered credibility, realizing that his left-wing buddies will have to swallow this defeat (throwing them under the bus, but who cares – after all, who else will they turn to?)
• He can sign a reform act with a watered-down public option re-inserted by an Obama-pressured House/Senate conference committee (as Ed Morrissey in the quoted article suggests), providing some degree of cover for the Congress while allowing him to declare victory (throwing the American public under the bus.)

The option with the least political risk to everyone is the second, and it could be combined with the first. Anything resembling the third option will risk a major turn-over in Congress and a loss of the democratic majority in one or both houses, which will all but ensure a single term Obama presidency. Remember, electability trumps policy.