Sorry Mr. Boehner, you can't have it both ways

New House Speaker John Boehner, R, Ohio, has rejected estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that his plan to kill the affordable health care act would increase the deficit $230 billion in the next nine years.(CBO summary report)

He told the Washington Post in a comprehensive and very fair story "Well, I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health-care law will increase the deficit," he replied. "CBO is entitled to their opinion, but they're locked within constraints of the 1974 Budget Act."

For years, Boehner has used CBO estimates (as does every else because they're legitimate) for his own arguments on the affordable health care bill's initial costs. When CBO reported those costs as too high or raising the deficit, the Obama administration went back and changed things about the law, after which CBO changed its costs estimates.

Everyone, including Boehner, seemed to accept those estimates.

In addition, Boehner and the Republican leadership appear to be doing the same things they decried in the crafting of the affordable health care bill. They are not going to allow any hearings or allow any amendments to their bill to repeal the act. They're basically going to cut off discussion, a curious thing to do in a body of Congress.

That's just hard to defend. Here's what Boehner told the Post. "I promised a more open process. I didn't promise that every single bill was going to be an open bill."

Yikes. That's pretty damning.

I'm not sure I would advise Mr. Boehner to do many of the things he criticized when he was out of power. And if we're going to pick and choose when we believe the CBO, we may as well guess at the numbers.