The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the federal governemnt doesn't have the money to pay for the Democrats' health care reform proposal. From the NYT :

The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office testified on Thursday that health care legislation proposed by House Democrats and the Senate health committee would not slow what he called the unsustainable government spending on medical care, but instead could drive the nation further into debt.

The testimony provided ready ammunition to Republican critics of the Democratic health care proposals, who have been arguing for weeks that the legislation would make health care cost more, not less, and that it would fail to achieve President Obama ’s objective of providing health coverage to all Americans.

Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chairman of the Republican conference, quickly issued a statement using Mr. Elmendorf’s testimony to hammer the Democrats.

“Today’s announcement by the independent C.B.O. confirms what Republicans have been saying all along,” Mr. Pence said. “The health care proposal by Congressional Democrats amounts to a government takeover of our health care economy that will be paid for by small business owners and working Americans at a time when they can least afford it.”

I've got a call in to U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA, 5), who's on the Republican Health Care Solutions Taskforce (and lays out her thoughts here ), for a reaction to the CBO's political gimme to the GOP.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA, 1), an advocate of the the public option, tried—a bit abstractly—to address the cost containment issue in this morning's commerce committee meeting. Commerce Chair Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA, 30) is the author of the bill in the House.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-o7CpS8x7Y[/youtube]

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo puts the CBO report in context , noting that the cost containment measures, cutting Medicare costs and raising revenues, were not taken into account. TPM writes:

"The analysis issued today does not take into account other parts of the proposal that would raise taxes or reduce other spending (particularly in Medicare) in an effort to offset the federal costs of the coverage provisions," [CBO Cheif Doug] Elmendorf wrote with regard to the House bill on the CBO's blog two days ago . In fact CBO has only analyzed "the major provisions related to health insurance coverage that are contained in draft legislation." Most of the provisions that would reduce the trajectory of federal health care spending, though, will not be found in the sections of the legislation that pertain to expanding coverage.

FRIDAY UPDATE: The House Committee on Education and Labor approved the health care bill today 26-22. (Inslee's commerce committe is set to vote on it next week). Rep. McMorris Rodgers—who still hasn't returned our calls—voted with the GOP against the bill.