Nancy Pelosi Said WHAT on Medicare?
In an interview with Bloomberg TV yesterday, former Speaker Pelosi made the following statement when it comes to entitlement reform (relevant comments are at around the 4:15 mark of the clip):
We believe that solvency of Medicare and Social Security is very important. If there are any savings – waste, fraud, and abuse – any of that that can be had, they should be poured back into Medicare and Social Security.
This comment was a curious statement for the former Speaker to make, as non-partisan budget analysts and even President Obama have admitted that the health care law uses more than $500 billion in Medicare funds to pay for new entitlements:
- Medicare actuary Foster has written that the Medicare provisions in Obamacare “cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions under the PPACA) and to extend the [Medicare] trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.”
- The Congressional Budget Office agreed with the Medicare actuary, writing that the Medicare provisions in Obamacare “would not enhance the ability of the government to pay for future Medicare benefits.”
- President Obama in an interview with Fox News last year admitted that “You can’t say that you are saving on Medicare and then spending the money twice.”
The former Speaker also alleged that Social Security and Medicare are not contributing to federal deficits. This claim is however FALSE, and has been exposed as such by the non-partisan factcheck.org. The fact is both Social Security and Medicare are running cash-flow deficits – the only thing allowing full benefits to be paid out are the paper IOUs in the respective government trust funds, and when the government cashes in those IOUs, that adds to the deficit. Medicare alone is projected to run a deficit of more than $39 billion this year – and will NEVER achieve balance, running deficits as far as the eye can see. (By point of comparison, Greece ran a budget deficit of only about $35 billion in its most recent fiscal year.)
Last year then-Speaker Pelosi famously said we had to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. Some might suggest she needs to take her own advice, to rediscover how Obamacare uses more than half a trillion dollars in Medicare savings – not to improve Medicare’s fiscal situation, but to create new and unsustainable entitlements.