Silver Senator Note:
Yes, twice, according to AP, Wall Street Journal and Reno Gazette-Journal, who gave it 7/10 on the Truth Meter.
This is important for all voters who suffered healthcare costs rising in double digits with diminishing healthcare results.
America
spends the most for healthcare in the world, yet sits near the bottom
of developed nations in infant health and life expectancy, a very real
election issue:
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/01/10922752-countries-that-spend-the-most-on-health-care?lite
When will we voters hold our elected public servants accountable?
The
two National Committee Party Candidates want to either raise debts,
regulations, spending and taxes, or promise to cut them, as they did for
two generations, with increasingly disastrous results.
There
is another Constitutional approach to health, justice, life, liberty,
peace and prosperity represented by the Silver Senator serving people,
not corporation, foundation or union special interests.
We can send this to friends and family and vote for freedom right now, or suffer the same tired old candidates and consequences:
http://nvsos.gov/index.aspx?page=1089
Hat Tip to SHG:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/PJ-p29xEM0s 4:33
Fact Checker: Did Heller vote for or against Medicare cuts?
10:03 AM,
May 29, 2012
|
Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., was the only member of Congress to vote for the Paul Ryan budget [with Medicare cuts] twice. / AP file
ask fact checker
Mark Robison is the Reno Gazette-Journal’s community analysis
writer.
Fact Checker is our weekly analysis on whether the facts and
figures floated in the media are true.
Have something you think we need
to examine? Email factchecker@rgj.com or call 775-846-5368 .
The claim
Sen.
Dean Heller, R-Nev., celebrates that he voted to restore $500 billion
in Medicare cuts when he also voted for the same cuts twice.
The background
Heller
is running against Democrat Shelley Berkley for one of Nevada’s two
U.S. Senate seats (Democrat Harry Reid holds the other one).
Heller
sent out a mailer last month touting his accomplishments, including
that he “voted to restore $500 billion back to Medicare that was cut by
the president’s healthcare law.”
Zac
Petkanas, senior communications adviser to the Nevada State Democratic
Party, contacted Fact Checker to look into the statement. He said Heller
“voted twice for those very same ‘cuts.’”
Petkanas
put the word “cuts” in quote marks because the so-called Obamacare
legislation didn’t call for cuts in the Medicare budget but for changes
that are expected to lead to about $500 billion in less growth in
Medicare spending.
The
Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan organization charged with
analyzing the financial effects of legislation, says that spending on
Medicare will slow by about seven percent over the next decade under
Obamacare.
It says this will result in Medicare costing about $7.1
trillion instead of $7.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
Republicans
said this half-trillion-dollar difference is a cut in the program
whereas
Democrats called it savings from new policies and efficiencies.
You can decide whether you think they are cuts or savings.
It doesn’t
matter for this Fact Checker, but let’s use “cuts” for consistency.
The
claim under consideration is whether Heller is claiming to have fought
against these cuts while simultaneously voting for them, twice.
The
first part is undisputedly true.
As Heller’s Washington-based spokesman
Stewart Bybee told Fact Checker, “Senator Heller has voted to repeal
the president’s healthcare law in its entirety, which would restore the
$500 billion cut from Medicare.”
Now for the second part, which involves the budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.
The
Associated Press reported on it:
“In a postelection reversal, House
Republicans are supporting nearly $450 billion in Medicare cuts that
they criticized vigorously last fall when Democrats and President Barack
Obama passed them as part of their controversial health care law.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote:
“Last fall, Republicans spent millions on TV ads attacking Democrats for cutting Medicare.
Those cuts — which reduced reimbursements to drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies and totaled about $500 billion over 10 years —
were made to pay for the new subsidies to younger, uninsured Americans. …
“But Republicans may not be all that hostile to those reductions after all. … (Ryan’s)
plan keeps in place the Medicare reductions.”
Heller — who switched from the House to the Senate when he replaced John Ensign
— told the Associated Press about the Ryan budget,
“I’m proud to be the only member of Congress who will get to vote for it twice.”
OK, so Obamacare included $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and Heller proudly
opposed them.
Basically those same cuts were included in the Ryan plan and he
proudly supported that.
How to reconcile this?
Bybee said that Obamacare is the law of the land and the Republican budget doesn’t
address
the Medicare cuts. He gave the analogy of the FDA. A vote for or
against the budget — which doesn’t address the FDA — is not a vote for
or against the FDA
because it’s not mentioned in the budget.
This argument is problematic because it’s not simply that the Medicare savings were
not addressed in the budget — they were intentionally spared.
Consider this passage from the Associated Press story mentioned above:
“Ryan’s spokesman, Conor Sweeney, said the cuts are virtually the only part of ‘Obamacare’…that the Wisconsin Republican preserved when he drafted his budget.”
Bybee repeated that the mailer’s reference to protecting Medicare relates only to
Heller’s vote to repeal Obamacare.
As
for the budget vote, he said, “The budget is a broad document. It’s
guidelines, not prescriptive policy. The generalization that is being
made is that if it’s not specifically addressed then it’s a sign of
support. That is simply not the case because that is not the function of
a budget.”
And Bybee offers another analogy: “There are a lot of members of Congress that do
not like the Endangered Species Act. Under your premise, if funding is reduced for
enforcement, but the budget does not specifically repeal the program then it’s a
sign of support. (That’s) just not the case. The context that you are applying under
this scenario could apply to anything within the federal government.”
The verdict
Is Heller promoting his vote to restore cuts to Medicare even though he later voted on
a plan that went out of its way to keep those cuts?
Yes. A weak argument could be made that the Ryan plan doesn’t contain those cuts
and so Heller didn’t technically vote for them.
But to say a vote for a budget plan that intentionally and specifically and
prominently saves those Medicare cuts is in no way a vote in support of those cuts
doesn’t square with reality.
This wasn’t a budget
compromise hammered out over weeks with both parties where each side
had to agree to some things they didn’t like. This was crafted by
Republicans to show their priorities for the nation, including on
Medicare, where they went out
of their way to save the cuts Obama came up with.
Truth Meter: 7 out of 10
That rating, though, doesn’t get into whether there’s a problem with doing what
Heller did.
Is it problematic for him to have his cake (“see how I fought Obama’s
Medicare changes”) and eat it too (“the budget I supported that singled out
keeping those changes is just a budget and shouldn’t be construed as support for
those changes”)?
Let’s leave it this way: If Berkley or Reid voted for a plan that would get rid of X and
later twice voted for a plan that specifically supported X — and then appealed to
voters based on opposition to X — would you say that makes sense?
Or would you say something’s fishy?
If you’d say Berkley and Reid were making sense, then what Heller did is good, too. If
you’d say Berkley and Reid were being misleading, then what Heller did is problematic, too.
ask fact checker
Mark
Robison is the Reno Gazette-Journal’s community analysis writer. Fact
Checker is our weekly analysis on whether the facts and figures floated
in the media are true. Have something you think we need to examine?
Email factchecker@rgj.com or call 775-846-5368
http://www.rgj.com/article/20120529/NEWS20/305290041/Fact-Checker-Did-Heller-vote-against-Medicare-cuts-
