WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's health care overhaul will reduce, rather than increase, the nation's huge federal deficits during the next decade, Congress' nonpartisan budget scorekeepers said Tuesday, supporting Obama's contention in a major election-year dispute with Republicans.

Republicans insist the plan will raise deficits -- by trillions, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney says.

But that's not true, the Congressional Budget Office said.

The CBO gave no updated estimate for deficit reductions from the law, approved by Congress and signed by Obama in 2010. But it did estimate that Republican legislation to repeal the overhaul -- passed recently by the House -- would itself increase the deficit by $109 billion from 2013 to 2022.

"Repealing the (health care law) will lead to an increase in budget deficits over the coming decade, though a smaller one than previously reported," budget office Director Douglas Elmendorf said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Tuesday's budget projections were the first since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most of the law last month. The CBO said the law's mix of spending cuts and tax increases would more than offset new spending to cover uninsured people.

As expected, the budget office said the law will cover fewer uninsured people because the Supreme Court ruled that states won't have to sign on to a planned expansion of Medicaid for their low-income residents.

Thirty million uninsured people will be covered by 2022, or about 3 million fewer than projected this spring before the court ruling, the report said.

As a result, taxpayers will save about $84 billion from 2012 to 2022. That brings the total cost of expanding coverage down to $1.2 trillion, from about $1.3 trillion in the last estimate.

Democrats immediately hailed the findings as vindication for the president. "This confirms what we've been saying all along: The Affordable Care Act saves lots of money," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

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Health care overhaul will reduce deficits, Congressional Budget Office finds