As the campaign for the presidency heats up, we’re going to hear the words “taxes” and “deficit” and “spending” repeated ad nauseam. And this number: $716,000,000,000.
That’s the amount of future Medicare spending that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress (exclusively, without a single Republican vote) cut, slashed, ripped, hacked out of the hands of elderly Americans over the next ten years.
And I thought Democrats loved Medicare, believed in it, wanted to keep it like it is against the bitter schemes of GOP Scrooges!
Now, as Republicans attack the Democrats’ attack on Medicare, Dems have counter-attacked by charging that in his plan GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan cuts Medicare this exact same $716 billion. Ryan explains that his approach simply took the status quo as the baseline, and, sadly, tragically, that includes Obamacare’s nearly trillion dollar malpractice in gutting Medicare funds.
With older citizens constituting a huge voting block, this fall’s election may hinge on this $716 billion being taken from Medicare. Funny thing is, the number is a mirage. Meaningless. Not real. Medicare will not be cut $716 billion. Not really. Instead, it will grow in leaps and bounds over the next decade.
Nothing in Obamacare stops Congress from spending that $716 billion and more in coming years. In fact, they already plan for Medicare spending to grow by far more.
That’s the problem more broadly with the cuts Democrats offer in exchange for higher taxes. The cuts are illusory because the spending continues to grow. Therefore, any tax increases to plug deficit spending would be pouring water into a bucket full of holes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “716 Billion Lies”
But if they didn’t cut it, that means that Obamacare really costs $716 billion MORE than they said it was going to cost and more than the extra trillion dollars OVER the trillion dollars that they said it wasn’t going to cost more than?
I’m confused, except for the “we’re screwed” part.
Drik — You’ve hit the nail on the head.
A very nice turn of phrase, “Democrats in Congress (exclusively, without a single Republican vote) cut, slashed, ripped, hacked out of the hands of elderly Americans”. Frank couldn’t have said it better or more convincingly.
Really, Paul? That debunked myth is the best you can do???
The same $716 billion that the Ryan budget deleted?
The same $716 billion that comes entirely out of excess, unnecessary payments to providers and insurance companies, without cutting benefits???
The same $716 billion that doesn’t effect the health care services given the elderly?
Are you really so in the tank for Robme that you’d go this low? I am sorry to hear that…
So one more time our beloved fraternal republic’s future — and that of the very Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization that has long continued to exist only at the enormous cost of American blood and American treasure — is in the hands of the manifestly evil vast RICO-racketeering organized-criminal hoards that insist we call them by their street name: the “Democratic” party. And in the hands of those millions of American and/or criminal alien and/or felonious and/or dead “voters” too damned stupid to know they’re lied to and/or who are too damned envious, hate-filled, enraged, mean-spirited and/or greedy to care.
Everything’s about normal, that is.
Brian Richard Allen:.
Lost Angels — Califobamicated 90028
And The Very Far Abroad