Democrats have lots of ambitions. One of them is their health care overhaul, which included a lot of “pay-fors” — i.e., spending cuts that would pay for ObamaCare’s new entitlements. But they also want a jobs bill, a “doc fix,” and other things that require new government spending. Those also require pay-fors — unless Democrats are willing to expand further a $1‑trillion-plus deficit — and pay-fors are a scarce commodity.

Today, CongressDaily’s Anna Edney reports:

Some, though, are skeptical Democrats would use any of the pay-fors because that would mean officially declaring the reform effort dead.

“I don’t expect any effort to dismantle the reform bill until there’s no pulse,” one lobbyist said.

Right now, ObamaCare is mostly dead. And as we all know, “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead…Mostly dead is slightly alive.”

A good way to tell when ObamaCare is all dead is when Democrats start picking at the carcass for pay-fors.