On August 21, I decided to “like” Romney on Facebook and see what kind of material would appear in my Facebook News Feed.
It did not take long for lies to start to appear in my News Feed, courtesy of the Romney Facebook page. Yesterday, the headline “Obama cut $716 billion from Medicare,” appeared, linking to a video clip and some text, along with a petition: “With every paycheck, Americans paid more and more into Medicare. Now, when you need it most, President Obama cut Medicare to pay for Obamacare. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will strengthen Medicare and protect the commitments made to current seniors.” (It omits mention of the Romney-Ryan plan to replace Medicare with a voucher program, something that they want to put into effect in 2022, years after they have left office. If their voucher program idea is so great, why not implement it soon — why make people wait until 2022 to start enjoying the fabulous benefits of their voucher program?)
The “Obama Cuts Medicare” message is a blatant lie. There is no other way to say it.
Obama did not cut $716 billion from the Medicare budget. His plan set limits to future Medicare expansion/growth in that amount (which may or may not actually happen) and plows the money that would be saved from future expansion of Medicare into another part of the Affordable Care Act, providing other numerous benefits to others. Medicare is part of the Affordable Care Act. All the Romney propaganda on this consistently ignores that fact.
This is really the most important thing to understand: the Romney-Ryan budget contains the same $700 billion reduction in future Medicare spending. However, and this is an important difference: In the Romney-Ryan budget, the money is cut out of the Medicare budget and NOT plowed into another use, because in the Romney-Ryan budget, there is no Affordable Care Act into which to plow the money saved through controlling growth of Medicare. The Romney-Ryan plan uses the $700 billion reduction in future Medicare spending to help offset the multi-trillion dollar tax cut the Romney-Ryan budget includes.
You may appreciate this fact-checking article from Politifact.
Mitt Romney, would you please stop the blatant lying?