As I highlighted in a recent WEEKLY STANDARD editorial, Obamacare has invented a dangerous new way to hide federal spending, including more than $100 billion designed to look like tax cuts.

In defiance of standard United States government accounting practices (and the government’s standard definitions of terms), Obamacare labels its direct outlays to insurance companies “tax credits” (not outlays)—even though they don’t actually cut anyone’s taxes. In this way, Obamacare is masking some $104 billion in federal spending over a decade—that is, the portion of Obamacare’s direct payments to insurers that the Congressional Budget Office is counting as tax cuts (see table 2).