Whenever some of the dodgy numbers behind this administration’s grand health-care reform, reconciliation, and general confabulation come to light, the president is fond of citing the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates to back up his case. Never mind that, on closer examination, they may not.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” as the Great and Powerful Oz commanded Dorothy and Toto when they were about to catch on to his routine. Which pretty much sums up the administration’s brave attempt to ignore the latest numbers out of that same Congressional Budget Office – because it now has produced some estimates you can bet the president won’t be citing:

The number-crunchers at the impartial CBO say the president’s budget would produce much bigger shortfalls than the administration has projected – and do so every year of the coming decade. For a total of $1.2 trillion more than the White House said it would. That’s trillion with a T, a number some of us can’t even picture. (How many zeroes is that again?)

By 2020, according to the CBO, the national debt held by the public would amount to 90 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. That’s the annual value of all goods and services produced by the American economy. And 90 percent of it would be in hock. There’s a word for that kind of debt-ridden economy: unsustainable.

To quote Paul Ryan, the Republican congressman and human calculator from Wisconsin who’s been giving the White House fits by looking at its numbers with a knowing eye: “The news today from the CBO is clear: The president’s budget will continue to lead our nation into fiscal catastrophe – an even worse one than the president’s own numbers suggest.”

What does the White House have to say in response? Kenneth Baer, its man in Management and Budget, mainly squirms. The report from the CBO, he says, “highlights how sensitive and uncertain budget projections are.” No kidding?

You bet such projections are sensitive and uncertain, which raises the question: Why did the White House rely on them to sell its health-care package?

Vast social and economic programs have a tendency to cost more than their advocates anticipated. See the trouble Social Security and Medicare are already in. Obamacare would surely follow the same trajectory as the years passed and the federal government sank even deeper into debt.

Mr. Baer took refuge in this administration’s favorite line when cornered: It’s all the previous administration’s fault. Or as he put it, “What is certain is that the irresponsibility of the past put the country on an unsustainable fiscal trajectory.” Is that supposed to justify the current administration’s making it even worse?

Mr. Baer’s defensive crouch makes one wonder: Is Barack Obama planning to go through his entire presidency blaming every problem he encounters on George W. Bush? He’s already entering his second year in the Oval Office; soon he’ll be at the halfway mark of his first term. It’s his budget now, yet somehow it’s not his responsibility. Does he think the voters will buy that? We’re about to find out come the midterm elections.

Deficits and the dangers thereof have long been staples of American political rhetoric, trotted out by the opposition against every administration whether Democratic or Republican. Debt is deplored even as more of it piles up on the backs of future generations.

But there’s something different about how that old issue is playing these days. Americans are paying attention. Talk of deficits, debts and fiscal trajectories used to just cause voters’ eyes to glaze over. It was as if we never really believed that those numbers could matter in real life. But the Panic of 2008-09 seems to have changed all that. Suddenly folks who couldn’t tell you the difference between a debenture and a dividend care about the national debt.

Why is that? When Dr. Johnson said that nothing so concentrates a man’s mind like the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight, he may have overlooked the possibility of being fired in a couple of weeks. The dismal science of economics has become all too real, and relevant. And the debt government is running up suddenly matters.

Paul Ryan’s talking about the national debt in his nerdy way is one thing. It’s expected of him and of the party out of power in general. But it’s not just the Paul Ryans. Look at Sarah Palin, who’s no intellectual, thank goodness, for she can communicate clearly, sensibly and forcefully. These days she can bring a Tea Party crowd to its feet by talking about TARP, AIG, bailouts, hedge funds, credit default swaps … subjects that were once safely confined to the financial pages. Now they generate applause lines. Something definitely has changed. Can reality have dawned?

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