Politifact has named Democratic claims that Republicans want to end Medicare as the lie of the year for 2011. While I share Mark Hemingway’s concerns about the rise of fact-checking operations, he also points out that it is harder to get one of these operations to point out a misleading claim from the Democrats, so that fact that the Medicare claim topped the list gives this assessment an added level of credibility. Of course, it’s not a new claim. As I wrote in Commentary a few months ago, Democrats have been engaged in a Mediscare campaign against Republicans on decades. The hope is that Politifact’s ruling will put an end to this canard for 2012 and beyond, but I wouldn’t count on it.
The claim is not going away because Politifact is wrong. Eliminating Medicare and replacing it with a premium support model where premium support will not keep up with medical inflation is in fact an elimination of Medicare.
Just because the inadequate premium support program that replaces Medicare is itself arbitrarily named "Medicare" to create a false sense of continuity, that does not change the fact that the old Medicare program which used to actually guarantee care (unlike inadequate premium support that does not cover medical inflation) was in fact eliminated.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuselol.
You are lying. Why do you keep lying? Don't you Democrats have anything to do but tell lies? Why are you the lying liars who tell lies? Stop telling lies.
lol. This is going to be REALLY fun. Nice to have 50% of your re-election strategy for next year destroyed.
P.S. the other 50% is "It would have been worse without us." Good luck with that one.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's right, Welker, the *truth* is that we don't need to change anything about Medicare and it will just go on and on forever. Ain't that so, Honest Dave?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy, we simply need to tax the rich more and all unsound schemes will instantly become sensible!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHaven't you heard? It can run on 'oportunity' It's how the Welker plan pays for college after all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, you're welcome to argue that ending Medicare is necessary for reasons of cost. Let's just not pretend that the privatized, gutted program that would replace it is still "Medicare."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusemedicare doesnt guarantee care at all. more and more doctors are dropping medicare every day. as for medical inflation, thats caused by medicare. the doctors that do contintue to see medicare patients have to increase fees to everyone else to cover the medicare hole.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMedicare is already bankrupt, by any reasonable accounting standard. It has an unfunded liability of $25 TRILLION, according to the latest Medicare Trustee report.
And that estimate is woefully understated, because it is necessarily based on the laws in place at the time the report is prepared, one of which (the sustainable growth rate for physician fees) ostensibly contains cost increases but which is annually ignored through a 'doc fix'.
I'd say the essence of the lie is that it's impossible to kill what is already dead.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBy this same "logic" doing nothing is also an attempt to get rid of Medicare because the current system is unsustainable.
Remember David wants everything to be free, and thinks that it can be if only other people are taxed enough.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe lie of the year is the Obama re-election campaign's Big Lie that raising taxes on the rich would cure all our problems.
First, the President, and Democrats in general, are constantly calling for a return of the current tax rates for the top two brackets to the levels of the Clinton administration. For individuals, the current 33% rate on adjusted gross income between $174,400 and $379,150 would go to 36%, and the current rate of 35% on income above $379,150 would go to 39.6%. (For joint returns, the bracket thresholds are $212,300 and $379,150.) The figure most widely stated for the increased revenues flowing from this tax hike is $70 billion/year. Yet the President and the Democrats would have us believe that this increase would be sufficient to wipe out a $1,300 billion annual deficit, and even to add new programs to the welfare state.
Second, the President's Jobs Bill -- as best I can understand it -- seeks to change the effect of income tax deductions for individuals with annual income of $200K or more, and joint filers of $250K or more, such that each $1,000 worth of deductions would subtract only $280 (28%) from the filer's tax bill. Current law gives them reductions of $330 (33%) to $350 (35%) for each $1,000 in deductions. I have not seen a simple statement of the increased revenues which would flow from this change. But when you consider that President Obama contends that ten years of this new rule, plus additional revenue from the repeal of the carried interest rule ($4B/yr) and changes to the deductions for oil wells ($4B/yr) and private airplanes $0.3B.yr), would be sufficient to offset his Jobs Bill's $447 billion price tag, it would seem that the revenue increase would be in the range of $35 to $37 billion per year.
Third, back in October Senate Democrats proposed to swap out the Jobs Bill's revenue measures for a straight 5.6% surtax on all income above $1 million/year. Again based on the fact that ten years of this measure is supposed to offset the Jobs Bill's $447 billion price tag, it would seem that this surtax would increase revenues by about $44.7 billion per year.
Not only have the Democrats spent the same money three different ways, as you can see the dollar amounts of their proposals -- somewhere between $35 and $70 billion/year -- are insignificant in comparison to annual budgets of nearly $4,000 billion, and annual deficits of more than $1,000 billion. This is why Obama's re-election campaign is the The Big Lie campaign, based as it is on the Big Lie that tax hikes on earners in the top two brackets would be the cure to all that ails us. That sales pitch is, very simply, a lie.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"While I share Mark Hemingway’s concerns about the rise of fact-checking operations, he also points out that it is harder to get one of these operations to point out a misleading claim from the Democrats, so that fact that the Medicare claim topped the list gives this assessment an added level of credibility."
What a beautifully pathetic reversal. Factcheckers are a social ill up until the moment they agree with you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCome on, Mr Welker. Making much needed reforms to Medicare so that it can be there for future generations is not ending Medicare. The current setup is unsustainable. Modifying it is not the same as ending it. Benefits will still be higher in the future than they are currently.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe sad part is that it shouldn't be a lie. Republicans SHOULD want to kill Medicare. I find it very sad that Republicans have branded themselves over the last decade (and more) as the defenders of entitlements. Tinkering around the edge of the socialist state is the roll of "conservatives" in Europe... Republicans seem to want that to be our lot here as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHeh. If "changing" Medicare is the same as "destroying" it, then Obama really IS out to destroy America!
Right, Dave? Right? Eh? Eh? Oh, c'mon, Dave; don't go away all mad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat Politifact got this one right is mostly by accident.
For the most part, they judge a statement based on whether it is technically true, and they get to define the technicalities to a large degree.
For instance, they evaluate Herman Cain's statement that "Every worker pays 15.3 percent payroll tax," as being mostly false, because, technically, only the self-employed do so. They don't understand Cain's point: that the employer's side of the tax is an accounting gimmick to hide the tax, and its cost lies largely on the worker.
Also, in general, they don't get that some people making "factual statements" are really stating opinions about how the world works, not reciting statistics. There is no nuance of language for these people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhether the Ryan plan's degree of change was reform or elimination is clearly a semantic gray area, not a lie. Big Politifact fail.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut I thought PolitiFact was boooo ooooo.
Oh wait, that was last year when they went after a GOP line. YAY POLITIFACT!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHoly crike, you missed his point entirely. Yow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHis point as regards PolitiFact is that it's biased towards Dems and therefore shouldn't trusted -- except when it points out a Dem lie, in which case it must be super-right due to its bias towards Dems.
IOW, the thesis proves the evidence.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor one thing, this is not how you couched your original post, which was pretty much about a changed tune on Politifact itself when it says something he (who? NRO? Conservatives? Troy himself? Your links were all over the place) likes, as opposed to when it doesn't. So, you're changing your avenue of attack.
For another, you still don't get it -- his ultimate point is about how, as Politifact being something which favors Democrats (and that Democrats frequently use to bolster their cause), if Politifact is saying it, it should help put the criticism to bed FOR Democrats -- but it won't.
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