Who watched the seven-hour health care summit last Thursday? My guess is not many.

I didn’t watch all of it, but I was able to watch a portion of the summit and I was pleasantly surprised by the representative’s respect for each other. As far as I understand, no major arguments or name-calling transpired, and their discussions involved substance above politics.

I was especially impressed with Rep. Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin. Out of all the members of Congress, Mr. Ryan seemed to be the most educated on the costs of the bill. He provided concrete evidence to prove all of his points and contradicted the Democrats’ claims about the costs of the current health care legislation.

President Obama and the Democrats say the bill reduces the deficit by a significant amount. That is true if you refuse to look past the smoke and mirrors of the legislative language. The Democrats in Congress have leaned on the impartial nature of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to prove the bill reduces the deficit. But as Ryan said during the health care summit, the members of the CBO are supposed to “score what is in front of them.”

The proposed bill would cost about $950 billion, but actual spending doesn’t kick in until 2014 and ends in 2024. This bill does a few things that lead to the facade of fiscal responsibility. First, there are several targeted tax increases that purportedly would raise about a half -trillion dollars. Then there’s the proposed cutting of  Medicare entitlements that would save another half-trillion dollars over 10 years. That sounds like it would pay for a $900 billion bill, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

These new tax increases and Medicare cuts would start as soon as the bill is signed – presumably 2010 or 2011 – and end in 2020. As stated previously, the bills’ spending doesn’t kick in until 2014 and continues through 2024. This means that, for at least four years, the bill isn’t being funded at all! The sly trick that allows the bill to appear deficit-reducing is, in fact, intentionally ignoring four years of spending. To put it simply, the bill’s legislative language tells members of CBO to begin the tax increases when no spending takes place. This is exactly what creates the front of a deficit-reducing bill.

Think of it this way: If you decide to join a fraternity or sorority your freshman year of college, and your monthly dues start at $100 – it would cost you $1,200 for the full year. But if you delayed and didn’t join until six months later, the total cost would only be $600. Pretty good deal, right?

Well, not really, because the subsequent year, and every year after, the membership would cost you the full $1,200. Delaying the payments until July doesn’t mean the following year’s budget will be less than $1,200. Now compute those numbers to trillions of dollars and you’ve got the current health care legislation. It holds off on implementing the new spending in order to make the initial total appear less costly. What numbers would we see if the bill was written truthfully? According to Mr. Ryan, the true 10-year cost is $2.3 trillion.

To this point, other members of Congress have yet to invalidate any of his comments and the president didn’t seem too interested in rebutting any of the numbers he presented. That being said, we should have no reason to believe that Mr. Ryan is a liar. He presented his understanding of the facts within the legislation, and Democratic members of the summit mostly disregarded his comments and moved onto other issues.

It’s a really complicated trick that convinces many people to think it’s a fiscally responsible bill, but after deeper research it appears the bill is the furthest thing from responsible. In fact,  it’s misleading.

The government of the United States shouldn’t be allowed to ignore costs. Imagine if you skipped paying your taxes for four years? The IRS would ship you off to prison. Since when is the government entitled to do the same exact thing? Is it fair that our government can get away with such irresponsible fiscal planning but not its own citizens? The government should balance their budget exactly how you would balance your own.

Remember Obama’s statement regarding the health care reform bill? “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.” Yup, I’ll say it: Obama lied to you. I always disliked politicians before, but it’s really unfortunate that politicians have figured out ways to mislead the American people. Oh wait … they’ve done that before.