Thanks to BenSmithing Ben Smith, we now know that next week the media intends to change the subject away from the health care debate and on to whatever pro-Obama nonsense they can gin up. The media knows a national discussion of ObamaCare’s many flaws, including its massive tax increases and the half-trillion dollars it takes away from Medicare, can only help the GOP recreate its 2010 turnout tsunami in 2012. So not only will the media be making sure this doesn’t happen by dropping all discussion of health care, it has already sent forth its dishonest fact checkers to undercut Mitt Romney’s arguments against it.
In his statement yesterday after Chief justice John Roberts sold his soul to the media, Mitt Romney said the following:
“Obamacare cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion.”
Within a mere few hours, ABC News’ Chris Good and Shushannah Walshe ran screaming to cover Obama’s flank with this “fact check:”
CMS and the Kaiser Family Foundation tell ABC News that there will be no benefit cuts to Medicare. They say instead of Medicare’s being cut, there will be much more spending at the end of a 10-year window, but it does slow the rate of that growth.
So, according to ABC News, ObamaCare does not “cut” Medicare by $500 billion, it merely cuts the rate of Medicare spending by $500 billion over ten years.
Then, in this very same “fact check” and in that very same paragraph, we’re told this:
This is all unless Congress makes drastic changes to Medicare, for example passing House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan.
Do you want to know what ABC News considers to be those dire “drastic changes” under Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan? Between 2012 and 2021, the Ryan Plan increases Medicare spending from $563 to $953 billion — an increase of 70%.
But this isn’t the worst sin committed by ABC News.
When Mitt Romney calls a $500 billion decrease in the rate of Medicare spending increases a “cut,” ABC News deploys their fact-checkers within hours to undermine him.
However, when Paul Ryan’s plan increases Medicare spending by a full 70% over ten years — get this — on-air ABC News personnel not only declare that a “cut” but a “drastic cut.”
Just a few examples:
AMY WALTER, ABC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: They campaigned on cutting, but now, when they’re coming home to talk about cutting, they also have to defend how difficult this cut is, especially when we’re talking about Medicare.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, it seems Ryan is. As you know, he’s been working for years on this plan, and he’s really devoted to it. We were at his district in Wisconsin where he was holding a town hall meeting. And, as you saw, other Congress people are facing a backlash from their constituents. And many are now saying that perhaps the Republicans will start running away from the Ryan plan because of the drastic cuts he calls for in Medicare and Medicaid and other such programs. But he seems very committed to it, saying that without this kind of thing, there will be a massive crisis.
On ABC’s Good Morning America, news reporter Josh Elliot declared Hochul’s win to be “a seismic event in the political world” and a “shocking upset.” Like Curry, he declared: “The GOP candidate lost after backing that Republican plan to cut billions from Medicare.” In reality, the Republican budget plan increases Medicare spending from $563 billion to $953 billion ten years from now. That’s an increase of nearly 70%.
In other words, actual ABC News on-air personnel can declare Ryan’s decrease in Medicare spending increases a “cut,” but when Romney uses the same wording to criticize Obama for doing the exact same thing, ABC News throws a Big Red Liar Flag.
Just another example of how these dishonest and highly partisan MSM fact-checkers are used to guard Obama’s palace and to ensure honest criticism that might do some actual damage to him is never allowed to become the kind of narrative we saw, say, in 1995, when Newt Gingrinch was beaten senseless by the media over “extreme Medicare cuts” that moderately cut the increase in Medicare spending.
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