The Congressional Budget Office has just, in the last hour, reported its finding that Democratic health care reform plans, including the House one that Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs are opposing unless amended, would increase the deficit rather than contain it, much less reduce it.

“This is a bombshell,” Ross tells me. “It validates what the Blue Dogs have been saying,” which is that the bill must contain some as-yet unspecified provisions for containing costs.

Ross says the Blue Dogs have an amendment on cost containment to bring up this afternoon in negotiations with Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman. But he said the Blue Dogs had agreed not to discuss publicly any specifics until giving Waxman the courtesy of first perusal.

I wondered — just wondered — if this CBO development might render moot any Blue Dog obstruction by sending the leadership back to the drawing board. “I quit predicting a long time ago anything about the House Democratic leadership,” Ross replied.