On Wednesday, I posted Republicans Kill the CBO. Yesterday, Republicans put it into practice by ignoring the CBO estimate on the cost of repealing health care reform. In the process, they violate their own CUTGO rule. In addition, Republicans are proving that rules, even their own rules, are something for someone else to follow, but not applicable to them.

The nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in Congress said on Thursday that the Republican plan to repeal President Obama’s health care law would add $230 billion to federal budget deficits over the next decade, intensifying the first legislative fight of the new session and highlighting the challenge Republicans face in pursuing their agenda.

The new House speaker, John A. Boehner, flatly rejected the report, saying it was based largely on chicanery by Democrats.

Mr. Boehner’s dismissal of the report by the Congressional Budget Office, at his first formal news conference as speaker, was the latest salvo in the battle over the health care law. White House officials on Thursday said they were stepping up efforts to defend the law, with a new rapid-response operation to rebut Republican claims and to deploy supporters to talk about the benefits of the law.

But Mr. Boehner’s remarks held wider implications, effectively putting him on a war footing with the independent analysts whose calculations generally guide discussions about the projected cost or savings of any legislation.

“I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit,” he said.

“C.B.O. is entitled to their opinion,” he said, but he said Democrats had manipulated the rules established for determining the cost of a program under the 1974 Budget Act.

“C.B.O. can only provide a score based on the assumptions that are given to them,” Mr. Boehner said. “And if you go back and look at the health care bill and the assumptions that were given to them, you see all of the double-counting that went on.”

But the analysis released by the budget office on Thursday was based on the health care repeal bill that House Republicans introduced on Wednesday. And it highlighted the difficult position that Republicans are in as they try to address what they insist are the top two priorities of voters who elected them in November: cutting the deficit and undoing the health care law.

According to the budget office, those goals are contradictory.

The budget office estimated that the health care law, including education provisions, would reduce deficits over 10 years by $143 billion. Tax increases and cuts in projected Medicare spending would more than offset the cost of extending health insurance to millions of Americans. The budget office projected that the law would result in even bigger savings beyond 2019… [emphasis added]