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An observer less given to post-partisan politics might call the $849 billion Senate health care bill, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday, a colossal fraud perpetrated upon the American people. He might call it a disgraceful display of contempt for the American people, even a slap in the face. He might describe the estimates that the bill would cut federal deficits by $127 billion over the next decade an example of criminal sleight-of-hand, a manifestation of the sort of fiscal legerdemain which recently landed Bernie Madoff in jail.

He might do that. However, I have long been a firm supporter of the hope and change which impelled Barack Obama (D-Chi.) to the White House. I celebrate the President’s commitment to bringing people together, and finding a happy middle ground. I certainly agree that once we agree on the problems, it will be easy to come up with the solutions. Which is why I am ecstatic that the latest version of health care overhaul will cut the deficit by $36 billion more than the Baucus bill promised.

That more churlish observer, having already pointed out that the Baucus bill numbers were a sham, based as they were on ten years’ worth of revenue covering seven years’ worth of expenditures, will no doubt call Reid’s version, calling for just six years’ worth of expenditures covered by the same ten years’ worth of revenues, an even more egregious offense to common sense and fiscal probity.

But I, willing to unclench my fist at the first sight of a hand extended in friendship, view this latest bill as a good start. It may not be perfect, but, as Rahm Emanuel and his boss both like to say, we should never allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Rather than dwell on the negatives, rather than keep harping on the fact that every version of health care reform seems designed to increase the cost and reduce the effectiveness of health care for 80% of the population to ensure that the remaining 20% can continue receiving the same shoddy health care they do today, let’s look at the potential benefits.

If pushing the onset of expenditures further into the future increases the amount by which the deficit is reduced, then it is possible to eliminate the deficit. What if we don’t start implementing the expensive parts of the bill for a full ten years, or even twenty? Why, the deficit will be a thing of the past.

In fact, we might even have a surplus. If so, we can use part of the surplus to fund another stimulus bill. Given the success of the first one, in which more than 640,000 jobs were either created or saved, at the cost of a paltry $176,000 per job, then think how much more effective a second stimulus bill will be. Why, the last one was so successful that the innovative folks over at recovery.org are already having to make up places to put all the new jobs. (Incidentally, ACORN has announced a new voter registration drive in Arizona’s 15th Congressional District).

With the next stimulus bill, funded by the remarkably cost-effective health care bill, the Obama Administration might have to start creating jobs in other countries, or even out in space. Guess now we know why NASA was so intent on finding water on the moon.