Do Democrats Lie?

Most certainly, however, I am sure they are not alone.  But I can’t blame ’em.  Really.  They’re just a victim of the tribalism going on in Washington.

So, specifically, Democrats labelled Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan as one that would “end Medicare as we know it.”  And they defend this statement thusly:

“The very definition of the Medicare program is a national health insurance program for seniors which House Republicans would abolish under their budget,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in an earlier rebuttal of Politifact’s analysis of the Ryan plan.

And additionally:

“It seems foolish to have to parse the meaning of the word ‘end,’ but if there’s a program, and it’s replaced with a different program, proponents brought an end to the original program,” liberal blogger Steve Benen wrote at the Washington Monthly. “That’s what the verb means.”

Okay, but the silliness is obvious.  Using this logic any time any program is changed, even by the slightest bit, the old existing plan would “end” and the new plan, complete with all it’s new language, would be the new plan.

Wanna change the test scoring system in public education?  Well, go ahead, but be aware that you are “ending public education as we know it”.

Wanna increase the speed limit on I-40 from 60 to 65?  Okay, but be prepared to defend how you are “ending the federal interstate program as we know it.”

Absurd, truly.

And I am not alone.  Politifact has named the Democrats charge the “Lie of the Year”.

Republicans muscled a budget through the House of Representatives in April that they said would take an important step toward reducing the federal deficit. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies.

Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care “because Republicans voted to end Medicare.”

Rep. Steve Israel of New York, head of the DCCC, appeared on cable news shows and declared that Republicans voted to “terminate Medicare.” A Web video from the Agenda Project, a liberal group, said the plan would leave the country “without Medicare” and showed a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. And just last month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a fundraising appeal that said: “House Republicans’ vote to end Medicare is a shameful act of betrayal.”

After two years of being pounded by Republicans with often false charges about the 2010 health care law, the Democrats were turning the tables.

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year.

Go read the whole thing.  There are worse things to do on December 20th.

4 responses to “Do Democrats Lie?

    • Of course, this is generating controversy!: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/politifact-lie-of-the-year_n_1160576.html

      This is the thing with liberals. Not only do they demand that the need they identify be “cured, or met or fixed”, but they then also demand the method whereby that need is met. In short, the create the problem and the solution.

      For example, unemployment.

      The left defends unemployment benefits. And they then require that those benefits take the form of pure and simple wealth transfer. If you even bring UP the idea of reform, well, then, you hate unemployed poor people. And kittens. And grandmas who love kittens.

      In the larger sense, Medicare is really only a program established by the government to provide care for the elderly. Why the Liberals feel they need to own the “hows and the whys” is beyond me. You could literally present them with a program twice as efficient and half as expensive and they STILL wouldn’t agree to change it. They simply have too much of these programs tie to their DNA.

  1. Perhaps they needed to be bi-partisan – wasn’t last year’s lie of the year the claim that the health care reform was a “government take over” of health care?

    • Perhaps they needed to be bi-partisan – wasn’t last year’s lie of the year the claim that the health care reform was a “government take over” of health care?

      Well, now. THAT was true 😉

      heh heh

      funny thing, politics.

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