Oops. They “accidentally” overstated the savings that would result from the Senate’s version of the legislation. And now the agency is revising its figures. On a Sunday. After Democrats already received positive press on the wrong figures.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) corrected its estimate of the Senate health bill’s costs on Sunday, saying it would reduce deficits slightly less than they’d predicted.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said that the nonpartisan budget office had overestimated the extent to which the legislation’s new Independent Payment Advisory Board would bring down the deficit.

While the CBO’s estimates of the board’s and overall bill’s impact in its first 10 years of the legislation are correct, Elmendorf wrote, the program’s effects on deficit reduction during the second decade of the program were overestimated.

“CBO expects that the legislation, if enacted, would reduce federal budget deficits over the decade after 2019 relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP,” Elmendorf said. “In comparison, the extrapolations in the initial estimate implied a reduction in deficits in the 2020–2029 period that would be in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP.”

Once again we find the government getting its cost projections wrong. Every new entitlement comes with a publicized price tag that ends up being just a fraction of its true cost to taxpayers. If the government tells you a project saves $10 billion, expect to pay an additional $80 billion. Government programs only cost more and more.

Think about it. We’re going to insure an additional 30 million people thanks to American taxpayers. And somehow that’ll cost us less than we’re paying today? Does that even make sense? Even Saturday Night Live, known for its liberal slant, mocked that claim. It’s just not going to happen.

We’re establishing yet another costly entitlement program that will push our country closer to the edge of collapse. Just what our country, with its $1.4 trillion annual deficit and entitlement programs already on the brink of bankruptcy, needed in the midst of a prolonged recession.

Hey, thanks, Senator Nelson. Screw you, too.