This is getting dumb & reckless (& wrong). Remember Obama wanting something passed before the August break; anything, just pass something.

Dana Milbank reports in The Washington Post:

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future -- period," President Obama told Congress in a health-care address last month.

Well, that depends on what the meaning of "plan" is.

Senate Democrats wanted to protect doctors from scheduled cuts in Medicare payments over the next 10 years, but there was a problem: Doing so would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to the federal deficit, making mincemeat of Obama's promise. So Democrats hatched a novel scheme: They would pass the legislation separately, so the $250 billion cost wouldn't be part of the main reform "plan," thereby allowing the president to claim that that bill wouldn't increase the deficit.

Republicans, who had been losing traction in their effort to fight a health-care overhaul, could hardly believe the gift the majority had given them.

"I have never witnessed something more sinister!" an agitated Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) declared on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. Citing a report that the "doc fix," as the $250 billion measure is called, was created to buy the American Medical Association's support for the main health-care bill, Corker accused the AMA of prostitution. "We all know that the selling of one's body is one of the oldest professions in the world," Corker said. "The AMA is engaged in basically selling the support of its body."
_______________

According to The New York Times:

Senate Democrats on Tuesday backed down from their effort to increase Medicare payments to doctors without offsetting any of the cost over the next 10 years.