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First the Supreme Court rewrote President Barack Obama’s signature health reform law to save it from the Constitution. Now the Internal Revenue Service claims its new rule can interpret the law in a way that violates its text and history.

The latest outrage against common sense is an IRS rule finalized on May 23. The rule makes tax credits available to participants in federally run health insurance exchanges created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). But while Section 1311 of ObamaCare allows tax credits to certain people in state-run exchanges, Section 1321 – the section regulating federally run exchanges – does not.

Nevertheless, the new IRS rule specifies that tax credits will be available through exchanges “established under section 1311 or 1321” of ObamaCare.

By rewriting ObamaCare without statutory authorization, the IRS is engaging in an illegal power grab that will cost taxpayers billions.

Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, had asked his staff to compute the long-term costs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). After three months of combing through the hundreds of pages of the law and comparing their expected costs to the United States’ fiscal outlook for the next 75 years — just as the government currently does for other programs such as Social Security and Medicare — Sessions’ staff estimated that ObamaCare has created a $17 trillion unfunded liability for the U.S. government.

The federal government faces a daunting fiscal outlook, which makes the budgetary impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act even more important. The official Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis indicates modest deficit reduction over the next ten years and beyond. We examine the underpinnings of the CBO’s projection and conclude that it is built on a shaky foundation of omitted costs, premiums shifted from other entitlements, and politically dubious spending cuts and revenue increases. A more comprehensive and realistic projection suggests that the new reform law will raise the deficit by more than $500 billion during the first ten years and by nearly $1.5 trillion in the following decade.

Every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters.

Here, for example, is what Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group of budget watchdogs, told me: "The Senate bill is better than the House version, but there's not much reform in this bill. As of now, it's basically a big entitlement expansion, plus tax increases."

The challenge to Congress -- and to Obama -- remains the same: Make the promised savings real, and don't pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.