Good analysis

Reader comment on: Romney's Mediscare

Submitted by John Gillis (United States), Aug 13, 2012 17:39

Excellent piece of dissection of this ridiculous Romney claim, and exposing it as the self-contradictory steaming pile that it is. Of course, what Romney would probably say if he responded to you directly, would be that he means future cuts over the next 10 years, related to Obamacare's cuts to the program. (Naturally one has to disregard verb tenses and other such details in his statement.)

Whether such a claim is accurate or not over the ten year period is impossible to know, but that would make a little more sense, since I gather Obamacare gains its "savings" by means of cutting Medicare outlays by a half trillion or so over some long period.

This points to the most bizarre trope that has been used by both parties in recent years -- the ten-year-number. "I will save America 40 billion dollars over the next ten years" Wow, $4 bil a year can't even be legitimately called a rounding error in our huge budget/deficit -- but one sees numbers like that all the time by both parties. I think we need a constitutional amendment forbidding politicians to project more than two years into the future -- the length of House tenure - since that's as far in the future that all the short-term-mentality politicians we have can think anyway, if one wants to be generous. (Just kidding about the amendment idea.)

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