Obama says government will go bankrupt unless health care reform is passed

President Obama told ABC News' Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government "will go bankrupt."

The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.

If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee....your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you," he said. "Potentially they're going to drop your coverage, because they just can't afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. "

The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an "unsustainable" trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, "the federal government will go bankrupt."

"This actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid," Obama said.

Ed Lasky provides the necessary reality check:

Does he have any idea of the economic disaster he and his fellow Democrats are unleashing? Yet, he has the audacity to claim not passing it will cause the federal government to go bankrupt. Economic literacy - not something our brilliant president has. The government really won't go "bankrupt." It can just keep borrowing and spending and printing money. Besides, medical care costs are not going up 25-30% every year.

This might just be the stupidest thing Barack Obama has said yet.

One might wonder how spending at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years is going to help keep the government solvent.

It might not be stupidity; just plain old fear mongering and lying. It shows how absolutely desperate the president is to get his health care reform bill passed.