The Daily Caller: In her first appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee since the health-care law passed, Kathleen Sebelius responded to a line of questioning by Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois about whether $500 billion in Medicare cuts were used to sustain the program or pay for the law.
“There is an issue here on the budget because your own actuary has said you can’t double-count,” said Shimkus. “You can’t count — they’re attacking Medicare on the CR when their bill, your law, cut $500 billion from Medicare.”
He continued: “Then you’re also using the same $500 billion to what? Say your funding health care. Your own actuary says you can’t do both. […] What’s the $500 billion in cuts for? Preserving Medicare or funding the health-care law?What pisses me off about this is that we knew the Democrats were cooking the book before ObamaCare passed. We knew about the bogus assumption the Democrats fed the CBO. We knew about how Democrats passed the Doc Fix separately and we certainly knew about the double counting. Had the media pressed Obama and the Democrats as hard as Rep. Shimkus pressed Sebelius, America would not be $500 billion more in the whole. Instead our media went right along with the gag that ObamaCare would lower the deficit.
Sebelius’ reply? “Both.”
I wish Shimkus had a few more minutes to ask Sebelius exactly where in the hell America is suppose to get the extra $500 billion the Democrats tried to hide?
Should America end up flat on her back busted broke, we should not vent all of our wrath at the Democrats' reckless spending. We should make sure to give some of that wrath to the Democrats' media lapdogs too.
Via: Memorandum
Via: The Daily Caller
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4 comments:
That's how democrats do their budget. A 500 billion here, another 500 billion there, next thing you know, 2 to 3 trillion dollars.
But who's counting. If you count about money to save our poor and weak people, you obviously support the rich, you want grannies to die, little kids to sleep on the street, and all black or immigrants to be homeless, you racists.
The Second Anonymous
With the left's math - we should have a surplus! And you are totally right - there is no longer any such thing as investigative journalism - the mainstream media simply takes their talking points from the left, broadcasts them, and then they go for coffee. Anyone who depends solely on the MSM for information is sadly ignorant of what's happening in this country.
I hadn't seen this one yet. Thanks for getting Sebelius' statement out there and into the discussion.
Knowing the Dems, I'd expect a retraction soon from Sebelius, or an admission that she had "misspoken."
It is a little hard to get the thread of the dialogue since the Republican Congressman gives Ms. Sibelius so little time to respond and cuts her off, but she appears to be saying that reductions in the growth of the wasteful Medicare Advantage program cut the Medicare growth rate and thus extend the solvency of the fund. It is true that as an accounting matter under unified government accounting the full amount of trust fund savings cannot be counted towards the cost of funding healthreform. That is why the official CBO cost estimates for healthreform do no such thing. They don't engage in any "double counting." Even Representative Paul Ryan admits that:http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/the_true_cost_of_the_health-ca.html
So the accusation about "double counting" goes to past Democratic political rhetoric, but has nothing to do with the official cost scoring of the healthcare reform law.
Perhaps if the Congressman had given Ms. Sibelius enough time to explain that would have come out in the testimony. But getting the soundbite for use in the echo chamber was too important for that.
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