Yesterday, former George W. Bush official Charles Blahous published a study claiming the Affordable Care Act would add at least $340 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade. This contrasted with the Congressional Budget Office’s score, which found the ACA to be a modest deficit reducer in its first decade, and a much larger deficit reducer thereafter . Conservatives promptly heralded the study as proof that Democrats and the Obama administration had gamed CBO’s scoring with a gimmick called “double-counting.”

Blahous’ accounting assumed Medicare spending would simply cease once the Medicare trust fund runs out. This would render the ACA’s spending cuts to Medicare moot, while its spending in other areas would remain — and thus severely worsen the ACA’s effect on the deficit. But Medicare isn’t the only government program with a trust fund that may soon run out. If Blahous’ logic is applied consistently to the entire federal budget, it radically changes the country’s overall debt path, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget discovered when it ran the numbers:

By Blahous’ accounting, debt as a percentage of GDP would drop to almost zero by 2050. That’s essentially equivalent to the drop predicted by Paul Ryan’s latest “Path to Prosperity” budget. If Blahous’ accounting framework is accurate, there is no long-term debt problem and thus no need for the GOP’s 2013 budget proposal.

This, of course, is nonsense . And nothing demonstrates this point better than the fact that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the Republicans didn’t use this baseline in measuring the cuts to the deficit in their own budget. They relied on the CBO’s method: Once the trust funds run out, Congress will continue the spending that keeps the relevant programs going because our society has a demonstrated commitment to maintaining the social safety net for retirement, health care, and so forth. This is largely what creates the future debts everyone is so concerned with in the first place. That much more realistic baseline is the one against which the CBO measured the ACA, and found that it does lower the deficit.

Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas filed a federal lawsuit against the state to block their exclusion from participating in the Women’s Health Program. Texas officials cut off the WHP funding to Planned Parenthood after approving a rule that prevents organizations “affiliated” with an abortion provider from being a part of the Medicaid program. The lawsuit asks the court for an injunction to stop the enforcement of the rule, which went into effect in March, so that Planned Parenthood clinics can stay in the program. The Texas Tribune reports:

Its filers argue the rule violates clinics’ rights by putting an “unconstitutional condition on their participation” in the Women’s Health Program. It also alleges that the Health and Human Services Commission, which is enforcing the rule, “overstepped its authority in adopting a rule that conflicts with the purpose of the laws that created the program.”

The health care program provided contraception and cancer screenings to low income women, and as a result of the state’s decision to ban Planned Parenthood’s participation, the federal government cut off the $30 million it provided for the the Women’s Health Program. None of the clinics that lost WHP funds offer abortions.

Even Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) has defended Planned Parenthood — “we need to provide those services, absolutely,” she said — as state Republicans led the effort to defund the organization. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has said the state will replace the lost federal funds, which made up 90 percent of the program, so that Texas can continue the program without including Planned Parenthood, but has not explained how he plans to do it.

Lawmakers in Mississippi have resurrected the so-called “heartbeat” bill, a measure which “equates abortion of a fetus with a detectable heartbeat to child homicide.” A physician who performs an abortion where a fetal heartbeat is present “could face the maximum 30 years” and some women would be required to undergo “a transvaginal ultrasound to determine whether a fetal heartbeat is present.”

Under the measure, pregnancies that result from “rape or incest or that would endanger the life of the mother” are exempt from the requirement, but those that would pose health risks are not:

Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, presented several scenarios where he said the language of the bill would be too restrictive. For example, he said, no exception is made for a situation in which a woman is pregnant with twins and a doctor determines both fetuses will not survive, and one must be aborted for the other to live.

“It makes reference to the life of the mother, but it has no exception for the health of the mother – both physical and mental health,” Blackmon said.

Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, presented a scenario where doctors have determined a fetus will not survive long enough to come to term, but if the woman does not abort the child, she will become infertile. “You think that’s what God wants?” Brown asked.

The bill passed the Mississippi House on Tuesday, but faces an uphill climb in the Senate, where it died in committee last week. The heartbeat can often be detected as early as “six to seven weeks,” before a women even knows she is pregnant and is likely unconstitutional, flouting the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that forbids states from banning abortions until the fetus is viable, which is generally around 22 to 24 weeks.

Last week, lawmakers approved a bill requiring doctors performing abortions “to be a board-certified OB-GYN with admitting privileges at a local hospital,” a measure that could significantly hamper or even shut down the state’s sole abortion provider.