What's missing from this Politico story , and indeed from Republican rhetoric around the health-care reform bill, is any evidence that the Affordable Care Act will increase the deficit. Republicans have exempted their ACA repeal bill from scoring by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office because the CBO's analysis is that ACA will save the government $143 billion over 10 years, and repealing it will increase the deficit. Sure, some of those savings depend on Congress behaving responsibly, but it's the best estimate of the bill's budgetary effects out there. Still, according to Speaker John Boehner's spokesperson, Michael Steel , “No one believes that the job-killing healthcare law will lower costs, because it won’t." Politico thinks that public opinion polling "highlighting the wide gulf between how the proposal plays in Washington and in the rest of the country." But polls aren't economic analyses, whether or not Politico or politicians believe the two are equivalent -- the...