No, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans Aren’t “Cutting” Medicare — But They Should
In a many-layered case of irony, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) attacked Republicans on Wednesday for doing something they didn’t do—but she did. In a letter to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi wrote the tax reform bill “will lead to devastating cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.”
First things first: A slowdown in a program’s projected growth rate does not constitute a “cut.” That fact applies just as much to Republican spending proposals as Democratic ones. You don’t have to take my word for it: Multiple fact check articles discussing Obamacare’s reductions in Medicare spending pointed out that under Democrats’ law, “Medicare spending will increase each year but at a lower rate.”
Pelosi’s 2011 phraseology hit the nail on the head, because Democrats did “take” money out of Medicare to fund Obamacare’s new entitlements. While on paper the spending reductions extended the life of the Medicare trust fund, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obamacare did not “enhance the ability of the government to pay for future Medicare benefits.”
While the Democrat record on Medicare leaves much to be desired, so too does the Republican one. Whereas Democrats reduced Medicare spending, then diverted those savings to fund another new and costly entitlement, Republicans just last month turned around and increased Medicare spending.
In the February budget “deal,” Republicans repealed the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). While Obamacare created this unelected, unaccountable board of bureaucrats to make binding rulings regarding Medicare, it did so for a worthwhile purpose: To cap Medicare spending. As I noted last fall, Republicans could have kept the caps in place, while repealing the board. They chose not to do so. As a result, the budget “deal” raised entitlement spending rather than lowering it.
As it stands now, the “devastating cuts to Medicare and Medicaid” that Pelosi claimed to warn her colleagues about on Wednesday seem inevitable—not because Republicans will soon pass legislation slowing the growth of entitlements, but instead because they refuse to do so. Because some Republicans remain under the misapprehension that Medicare “is underfunded,” and because liberals love running “Mediscare” campaigns designed to frighten seniors into voting Democratic, Republicans seem poised to do exactly nothing on entitlement reform for the foreseeable future.
At least, until the debt crisis arrives—which it will, and sooner than many think. With the imminent return of trillion-dollar deficits, and the federal government already $21 trillion in debt, China and other nations may not take kindly to the bipartisan profligacy perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans alike.
As I noted two years ago, if not for the double-counting fiscal gimmicks included in Obamacare, the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would already have been exhausted, putting the program’s solvency quite literally on borrowed time.
Last month, in typically understated fashion, Pelosi tweeted about how Republicans were “plotting to destroy your Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.” That claim implies a level of intent—that Republicans actually have a plan to reform entitlement spending—that quite clearly does not exist.
Instead, Republicans and Democrats will continue to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in the same way they have over the past several decades. Both parties will ignore the problem and do nothing until it’s too late. It’s the most insidious type of “bipartisanship,” but in Washington, also the most common.
This post was originally published at The Federalist.