Apparently Democratic members of Congress have a new strategy in their effort to reform health care: wild, crazy, transparently implausible lies.

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D., Mo.) held a health-care forum Monday. The crowd started out skeptical when he touted the savings the health-care legislation would create from the “efficiencies” of government. Then he followed up with:

The Congressional Budget Office most recently, uh, came out and analyzed the current plan and said that it was not only deficit neutral, which is one of the important factors for congressional leaders, but also over that over ten years will create a $6 billion surplus.

His remark was greeted with laughter, as Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf told Congress last week that “on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.” (HT: Reboot Congress.)

The claims for the $6 billion surplus come from House Democratic committee chairmen’s intrepretation of the report, which says that the surplus will be created once $245 billion in Medicare payments to doctors are taken off the books. Except that the legislation doesn’t currently have any provision to cover those costs. In other words, the Democrats are arguing the bill will create a surplus later once they pass some other legislation that they haven’t specified yet.