Fact Check please
by digby
The AP has got to stop putting interns on its Fact Check desk. It's getting embarrassing:
"The idea of taking war savings to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand, given that the wars were paid for with increased debt. Obama can essentially 'pay down our debt,' as he said, by borrowing less now that war is ending. But he still must borrow to do the extra "nation-building" he envisions."
Dean Baker responds:
There is not much sleight of hand here. President Obama is working off a baseline set by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that assumes war spending continues over the next decade. If he doesn't intend to continue this spending then he is freeing up money relative to this baseline. AP may not like this method of scoring, but it is absolutely standard in Washington policy debates. Changes are measured against a baseline. President Obama is just doing exactly what figures in both parties routinely do in discussing the budget. It would be more appropriate to make its complaint against CBO than against President Obama's speech.
There are a bunch of similarly bizarre complaints, which Baker handily dispatches. But this "check" on Biden is really weird:
"What they didn't tell you is that the plan they've put down on paper would immediately cut benefits to more than 30 million seniors already on Medicare."
AP responds:
"THE FACTS: Biden wasn't referring to any Medicare plan of Romney or running mate Paul Ryan, but to the consequences of fully repealing Obama's health care law"
Yes, and? He didn't say it was their "medicare plan" although that's literalist nonsense. He said they've put it on paper and they have. And they say it every single day over and over again. Why is this even controversial? As Baker says:
If it is not their intention to eliminate the benefits in this law for people currently receiving Medicare then they would presumably be able to say something like:
"we will repeal Obama's health care law, except for the benefits that it provides seniors already on Medicare."
Romney and Ryan have not ever said anything like this, therefore it is reasonable for Biden and others to assume that their plan is to eliminate these benefits for seniors.
Sheesh.
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