Is This the Washington Post or Examiner?

Perhaps we are becoming fellow-travellers of the editorial staff at the Washington Post.

NO ONE LIKES to be the bearer of bad news -- especially when it could threaten your multibillion-dollar health-care reform bill.

The Elephant in the room that is barely being mentioned is the new deficit figures leaked during a Friday afternoon drop by the Obama administration and given formal release this week.

The administration has a point when it argues, as budget director Peter Orszag did yesterday, that it inherited a terrible recession as well as a number of unpaid-for programs (prescription drugs, two wars) and tax cuts from the Bush administration.

yet...

Still, the Bush administration's irresponsibility notwithstanding, it is time to stop crying "we inherited it." The Obama administration needs its own clear, credible plan for restoring fiscal sustainability once the worst of the recession has run its course. Unless it can at least limit the growth in debt to the growth of the economy, investors will gradually lose faith in Treasury obligations, increasing the government's borrowing costs -- and turning a deficit crunch into a deficit spiral.

The problem clearly lies with the Administration

The new deficit numbers make it even more urgent that any health-care reform not only be fully paid for and certifiably budget-neutral in the eyes of independent analysts such as the CBO but also promise meaningful reductions in the cost growth of health care. So far, none of the plans under discussion measure up. The time is fast approaching for the president and Congress to face that reality, too

Perhaps it's time for some truthful talk to the proressive base that they can't go for the whole game but need to scale back to prevent economic collapse.