Bret Baier Catches Obama In a Lie

Charles Krauthammer noted this yesterday. This is the first time anyone in the press has challenged Obama on his dishonest claim that the cuts to Medicare can simultaneously be used to "strengthen" Medicare and also expand coverage to 30 million new people.

Paul Ryan mentioned this during the summit, but Obama ignored the question.

Here's Obama's answer, for the first time. The exchange begins around 2:14 and ends at 5:15.

Obama claims a couple of things here. First, he claims that "nobody's claiming" that this fixes the 38 trillion unfunded liability gap. But that's not true at all -- he's claiming that, for one. He continuously says that Medicare is going bankrupt without his supposed reform, but with his reform, it apparently won't.

Under pointed questioning, he walks his grand claims back to the is that his reform "doesn't weaken Medicare." Well! That's a lot different than claims the reform "strengthens the finances of Medicare," isn't it?

He also changes the terms of argument by stating that some of his "Medicare savings" will be used to pay off current seniors by closing the donut hole in drug coverage. But that deliberately misses the point, as that too constitutes new spending, and if we're plowing these alleged savings into new spending and new entitlements, it also can't be used to firm up future finances of current obligations. He is claiming that if he spends some of his "savings" on current seniors -- but new spending for current seniors -- this somehow "counts" as fixing Medicare long-term.

Of course it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. But he continues lying about this, claiming his that his "reform" addresses the long-term problem. It doesn't. It takes a big chunk of money and reassigns it to other spending -- most of it is taken from seniors to be spent on other groups -- and spends not a dollar to actually fix the financing for Medicare.

And little wonder is spin is so transparently dishonest: This is the first time he's ever been asked about it in an interview. His buddies in Big Media haven't given him any practice at answering the question because they've been too busy repeating his lies.

posted by Ace at 12:50 PM

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