Friends Like These - Buried in Obamacare is a secret weapon to contain Medicare costs. Meet the group of House Democrats who want to destroy it.

If an IPAB repeal bill passes the House with a couple dozen or more Democratic votes, it will set in motion a cascade of events that could end very badly for Barack Obama and his administration’s efforts to rein in long-term federal spending. What would once have seemed a partisan—and hence dismissible—Republican attack on a core pillar of the president’s health care reform will instead have a bipartisan glow. The Beltway media, long fixated on bipartisanship as an automatic indicator of worthiness, will quickly deem the bill to be the moderate position and IPAB as bureaucratic overreach. Indeed, industry groups are already touting Democratic opposition and labeling the repeal effort, in the words of a recent PhRMA press release, “a bipartisan issue,” knowing the value that label confers.

From there, it’s not hard to imagine what comes next. For Democratic senators wishing to come to the aid of their friends in the health care industry, the bipartisan sheen generated by the New Democrats’ support would provide cover for them to desert the White House and join Republicans in support of a Senate version of a bill killing IPAB. If enough of them do so, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be under tremendous pressure to allow a floor vote, and if the bill passes, the president will find himself in a terrible bind.