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REP. NANCY PELOSI, (D-CA) HOUSE SPEAKER: This bill is fiscally sound and will not add one dime to the deficit as it expands coverage, implements key insurance reforms, and promotes prevention and wellness across the health system.

The bill will expand coverage, including a public option to boost choice in competition in the health insurance reform.

ERIC CANTOR, (R-VA) HOUSE MINORITY WHIP: First of all, you got to say here they go again - same debate, different day. This is a gargantuan expansion of government takeover of our health care.

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BAIER: House Democrats held this big alley outside the Capitol. There you see it. It was kind of a campaign-type event, sweeping claims by Speaker Pelosi. Remember the first House bill was $238 billion in the red. This bill is different. To make it look better, Democratic leaders simply took out what was called "the doctor fix," eliminating scheduled cuts in fees to doctors and providers under Medicare that. That costs about $250 billion.

There are some other cuts here and there, and now the bill is less expensive and meets the president demand of not reducing the deficit.

So we're back with our panel - Steve?

HAYES: You could do that, but, I mean, it is a total and complete sham. I mean, it is a gimmick. If is as if I took a credit card and bought a new mountain bike on a credit card for $2,000 and then just didn't show it to my wife or didn't have a discussion. We still have to pay it. You still have to do something with that money.

What happened today is more gimmickry. Cleary this bill tinkers around the edges, but it's going to raise taxes. And there is a very specific tax that it's going to raise, the millionaires' tax, $500,000 on individuals, 5.4 percent on people making over $500,000 annually, $1 million dollars on family who meet that threshold.

And it amazes me that they would introduce something that is such an obvious job killer, potentially, at a time when we have 10 percent unemployment.

It is true that this won't go into effect immediately, but to even have this discussion when you have six in ten of the people who meet that threshold, small business owners, the people that sort of are the engine of the economy and generate these jobs, it is a discussion that I would not want to be having.

BAIER: I said at the beginning not reducing the deficit. I meant not adding to the deficit, obviously, the president's demand that it not do that. And this new bill under its current formulation doesn't add to the deficit.

LIASSON: Right, you can write a bill on paper that meets the CBO criteria. You have to pass the bill, and then eventually I guess you're held accountable for whether it does what you say it is going to do.

BAIER: But Mara, it's important to point out that the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, they calculate and score what you tell them to calculate and score.

LIASSON: If you say you're going to raise taxes by 300 percent on people, they will say it brings in this amount of revenue.

BAIER: So calculate it up and the numbers...

LIASSON: Yes. Now you have to pass it, and like I said, it has to eventually work.

Today at the White House, the president was talking about health care to small businesspeople who were instrumental in killing Bill Clinton's health care reform effort 16 years ago, and he said 90 percent of you are going to be exempt from the requirement that you either provide health care to your employees or pay a fee if you don't.

Now, Congress hasn't actually explained how they are going to do that. They haven't set the level for small businesses that are going to be taxed.

BAIER: That is a familiar theme. They haven't explained a lot of things.

LIASSON: Yes. But the one thing that I thought the House did that was pretty honest early on in the debate is they actually put the so-called "doc fix" into the bill. That's is why it got up to $1.2 trillion, which was obviously too much for the president, so they took it out.

They didn't actually take it out. They just put it off-budget or for to the side. It is still out there if they pass it.

The Senate refused because it isn't paid for.

BAIER: But can the president sign something that has this massive $250 billion off to the side? It is like a side plate.

LIASSON: Of course he can! Presidents have always signed things like that will add to the deficit.

BAIER: And look everybody in the eye and say this doesn't add to the deficit?

LIASSON: Yes, because this particular bill will be scored, maybe if it gets to his desk. But the CBO is not doing that, then there will be this other thing that does.

BAIER: Charles?

KRAUTHAMMER: We've always had shamelessness, but we've never had it on this galactic scale. This is shamelessness of a quarter billion dollar trick.

And the trick works like this - the bill has in it the assumption which the CBO has to accept, that they will cut a quarter trillion of Medicare by cutting the fees that doctors and others receive.

We know it's not going to happen because the House is going to have a separate bill in which it pays the quarter of a trillion with no offsets out of the borrowed money. So it is a huge hole in the budget, but it is in a separate bill.

The separate bill ought to be called the "pinnacle of cynicism act," because that's exactly what it is. However, in the bill that will be called the National health care Reform Act, it's not going to appear, and that's why it ends up under a trillion, and in fact why it is over a trillion and why it ends up with no deficit whereas it will increase the deficit by about $200 billion.

So that's the black hole at the center of all this.

Secondly, if you step back and say we're, in fact, creating an entitlement of $1 trillion dollars, and even if it is offset with raises and taxes, and lowers, and other revenues, and cuts in other spending, that is $1 trillion that you can otherwise apply to other parts of the treasury and the deficit, which are now going to be $9 trillion over a decade.

So, in other words, you create an entitlement. You steal the possible revenue sources out of other deficit reduction, and in the end you blow a hole in the deficit that is just enormous.

BAIER: And do they get a compromise?

LIASSON: I think in the end they will get a compromise. But he will never sign that $250 billion document, because it won't get passed. The Senate has already rejected it. They will go back to what they were already doing, which is year by year.

KRAUTHAMMER: It will be done year by year, instead of all at once.

LIASSON: Like a patch every year, like the AMT.