Column: The GOP thinks health-care reform costs too much. So why are they trying to repeal all the cost controls?

I've got some good news for deficit hawks: This year, Congress passed legislation reducing the deficit by about $125 billion over the next 10 years. But, as they say on the infomercials, that's not all! The bill cuts the deficit by $1.3 trillion in the second decade. That more than pays for every dollar we've spent on stimulus since 2008. It also sets up a new -- and credible -- system to keep Medicare's costs under control. So, hear that, fiscal conservatives? Hear that, bond markets? This is progress, baby. We'll lick our deficit problem yet.

The bill in question, of course, is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as health-care reform. The numbers come from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But as always, there's a catch: The savings arrive only if the policies behind the savings are allowed to do their jobs. And in the GOP's zeal to repeal a bill it considers a deficit-increasing nightmare, Republicans are focusing their fire on the parts they should like: The cost controls.

On July 27, Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Tex.) introduced the Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). The legislation doesn't seek to repeal health-care reform (though many Republicans would also like to do that). Instead, it takes aim at perhaps its most promising cost control: the Independent Payment Advisory Board. "In true fashion of Obama- Reid-Pelosi hubris," Cornyn said, "the IPAB is the definition of a government takeover." A government takeover of . . . Medicare?

Putting aside the metaphysics of the government taking over a government program, Cornyn makes two arguments, and they show the difficulty Republicans are having opposing health-care reform without opposing fiscal responsibility and much-needed deficit reduction.

Read on...