Ezra Klein has a good thorough take down of the GOP’s attacks against the CBO, which I’ve tried to present in video form below. Basically, Republicans are trying to argue that the CBO numbers are invalid because Democrats fooled the agency with legislative trickery. Rather than reducing the deficit by $138 billion, the bill increases the deficit by shifting the spending to 2013, double counting savings and leaving the sustainable growth rate unfixed.

Now say what you will about the CBO and the process of scoring, but it’s fairly clear that the Democrats invested a lot of time in playing by the rules and working with the agency to actually pay for reform. As Klein explains, “Democrats changed their legislation so the subsidies grew more slowly over time and the excise tax would grow faster. In other words, CBO said that they’d need to do hard things their constituents wouldn’t like if they wanted to cut the deficit more, and they did them.”

They did all this because the CBO is, for better or for worse, the non partisan arbitrer of cost. Don’t believe me? Just ask Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Here he is explaining why CBO is GOD:

- “I say all the time that CBO is God around here, because policy lives and dies by CBO’s word. Like the Bible, a CBO document can mean different things to different people and it’s easy to pull things out in isolation to justify a position. I hope everyone will take the full picture into account before rushing to judgment.” [March 6, 2006]

- “Do you question the work of the CBO and JCT? Well you shouldn’t because they’re like God around here.” [December 9, 2009]

Watch a compilation of Grassley’s remarks, followed by GOP attacks on the CBO:

So to be clear, after insisting that health care reform must not add to the deficit, Republicans are responding to the bill’s deficit reductions by arguing that CBO’s scores can’t be trusted because 1) they don’t score provisions Democrats excluded and 2) Democrats are feeding legislation that is tricking the models to produce deficit reductions. The argument has descended into the bizarre with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asking the CBO to include the SGR fix — a provision not part of health care reform — in the deficit projections. No word yet on whether he’s asked them to calculate the cost of purchasing candy for every child in America.

Over at The Treatment, Jonathan Cohn has asked Sarah Binder — a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution — to give a preview into this weekend’s rather complicated procedural showdown. I suggest you read the full piece, but I’ve adapted her predictions into timeline of what to expect, as Democrats are now fairly confident that they will have 216 votes by Sunday:

- Saturday 9am: The Rules Committee will meet and debate the self-executing rule. “Before debate on a bill can actually begin, the bill’s rule must get approval from both the Rules Committee and the full House.” The self-executing rule will either tie the underlining Senate health care bill to the reconciliation package or the rule itself. Binder suggests that the rule will also prohibit “amendments from being offered on the floor to the reconciliation bill.” The committee will likely pass the rule 9-4. (There are 9 Democrats and 4 Republicans).

- Sunday 1pm: “When the House meets, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), chair of the Rules Committee, will call up the special rule on the floor for consideration.” After the debate, typically one hour for each side, the House will vote to 1) end debate on the rule and 2) vote for the rule and begin debating the reconciliation package. Both votes will need 216 votes.

- Sunday after 2pm: The House will begin debating the reconciliation bill. Once debate is exhausted, the House will vote to end debate before voting for the package. Binder points out that it’s also possible that Republicans will be able to offer a “motion to recommit” (a move that would send the bill back to committee) before the final vote.

So I count up to 6 different votes between tomorrow and Sunday and I’ll be live-tweeting and blogging them right here all weekend long!

Jonathan Chait asks if Republicans could repeal the health care bill, but I don’t think they’ll want to. The short term benefit of motivating your base by condemning a drawn out and somewhat dirty process may be substantial, but repealing policies that give billions of dollars in federal funds to the states and protect individuals from some fairly egregious insurer practices, makes little sense.

The health care reform debate may not end after the Senate passes the reconciliation package and it will certainly bleed over into the election, but the organized push to repeal reform will likely abate. For the states, the question is one of pure economics. As Emma Sandoe points out in this report, states that choose to opt out of the Medicaid expansion will lose billions of dollars in federal funding and will be no closer to grappling with the strained public health programs in their states. Note that if Idaho and Virginia (the two states that have promised to sue the government over the legislation) pull out of reform they will be denying Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of constituents:

As unpopular as the bill is today, denying coverage to hundreds of thousands of residents — on the fed’s dime — can’t be a popular political position in the future. Some lawsuits may certainly advance to the courts, but they’ll be motivated a constitutional purism that doesn’t have the kind of broad based support of today’s populist outrage against the Washington process.

After the bill passes, we’ll forget about “deem and pass” and focus on the policy. As imperfect as it is, the new bill does make important investments in regulating insurers, investing in community health care centers and closing the donut hole for seniors — and those are benefits that are hard to take away. They’re a lot more tangible and significant than the insider process and special deal stories we’re hearing today. After all, Democrats were incredibly unhappy about the arm twisting that surrounded Medicare Part D, but they’re now looking for ways to improve it, not re-write it. The process fades, but the policy remains.

This morning, during an appearance on Good Morning America, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) reaffirmed that he might vote for the Senate health care bill if Democrats pass the Stupak abortion amendment as a separate measure. Stupak said that Democrats have shown a “renewed” interest in tying his amendment to the Senate bill:

STUPAK: George, that’s called an enrollment corrections bill. I presented that to leadership about ten days ago. There’s renewed interest in that piece of legislation that I and a number of us are ready to introduce. It’s prepared. Everybody’s looking at it right now. That’s one way, maybe. But we set the deal with the Senate. You give us a vote in the House. We had a vote in the House. It was overwhelmingly 240-194, to keep public law, no public funding for abortion.

Watch it:

Indeed, Stupak has been promoting this strategy for weeks, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that he would support a separate “tie bar” bill earlier this month. The tie bar approach requires just 51 votes in the Senate and would “tie” the health care bill to Stupak abortion provisions. “It almost goes the same time,” Stupak told Fox News’ Greta van Susteren. “And what the bill really says is, it does not become law unless this other piece of legislation becomes law.”

Obviously, the very fact that Democrats may be negotiating with Stupak illustrates just how pressed Pelosi is for votes, but I wonder if Democrats can’t just tie bar the Senate bill to current law. That is, if Democrats absolutely need to peel off more Stupak votes, why not just vote on the Hyde amendment — which Congress renews annually. It’s less restrictive than the Stupak language and it would relieve the concerns of moderate Democrats who worry that the bill does not explicitly extend current law to community health centers. Democrats probably won’t please Stupak — who is more interested in eliminating abortion coverage from the exchange — but they could secure the votes of some of his supporters and pass health reform.

To be clear, codifying Hyde is a bitter pill to swallow — Hyde is fairly restrictive and progressives don’t want to lose hope of repealing it — but if the alternative is a vote on the Stupak amendment (which basically eliminates abortions from the exchange) or no health care reform at all, it might be something worth pursuing.