While the Sentinel’s editorial (“Romney chose well”, August 14, 2012) suggests that the Obama-Biden campaign is “defending its accomplishments” with “juvenile attack ads”, the Sentinel’s editors conveniently failed to note that – according to every independent fact-checker – the Romney (and now Ryan) campaign is relying on outright falsehoods.

Thus, on “Meet the Press” Sunday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus – perhaps the most juvenile of Romney-Ryan apologists – falsely accused President Obama of having “blood on his hands” for cutting Medicare by $700 billion.

According to Priebus (and later Romney himself), President Obama “stole $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare.  He’s the one who is destroying Medicare”.  Those lies were so preposterous that not even Rachel Maddow could effectively respond.

In 2003, as part of Republicans’ unfunded (and thus multi-trillion dollar contribution to the national debt) prescription drug benefit, commercial health insurers received generous financial incentives to offer Medicare Advantage plans (which proved wildly popular).  The Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) ended those now-unnecessary subsidies and utilizes that savings to fund, inter alia, more preventive care services – especially for women.

The ACA also saved further billions by ending direct reimbursements to hospitals for rendering indigent care – because 30 million more Americans would be covered by some form of health insurance.  That’s why the American Hospital Association filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold the ACA’s Medicare provisions.

Over ten years, these – and other—savings will exceed $700 billion.  Yet, in “Republican speak”, President Obama’s deficit-reducing “savings” become blood-dripping “cuts” – even though the ACA prohibits any reduction in Medicare benefits to realize them.

Moreover, Medicare’s trustees recently reported that the ACA “significantly improved” its long-term financial outlook.  That’s why the Ryan Budget itself recognizes that same $700 billion savings—but utilizes it to eventually replace Medicare with vouchers.

              Bill Hugenberg
              543 Rim Drive
              Grand Junction, CO 81507
              (970) 257-1998
Word Count = 300

“There you go again”, Ronald Reagan might have chided Josh Penry for joining the team of pathological Republican liars (Romney, and Ryan) to sprinkle “fairy dust” on gullible local “conservatives” (“Ryan willing to grab ‘third rail’ of entitlement reform”, August 17, 2012).

Apparently, Penry missed Monday’s Republican “talking point”:  because of Ryan’s proliferating prevarications – the term “entitlement reform” is now discouraged in favor of the deliberately misleading, disingenuous, and oxymoronic “saving” or “preserving” those programs (particularly Medicare).

Moreover, to glibly characterize President Obama as a “fiscal miscreant” willfully and dishonestly ignores thirty years of empirical evidence to the contrary.

Republican icon Reagan and Bush I doubled the national debt (as percent of GDP) by using massive deficit spending to “stimulate” the economy while attributing economic growth to tax cuts (“Voodoo economics’), prompting Reagan’s own Budget Director David Stockman to resign in protest in 1985.

Bush II increased the national debt by another 50% by using “off-the-books” deficit spending to fund two more tax cuts (hoping to magically “stimulate” the economy), two wars, and Medicare Part D – all of which “fiscal conservative” Paul Ryan voted for. 

Since President Obama took office, the national debt has increased by another 10%—but with nothing “off the books”.  Moreover, as Stockman wrote in the New York Times on Monday, President Obama inherited the economic debacle caused by “thirty years of Republican apostasy” that “crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt”.

When President Obama responsibly proposed similar Keynesian fiscal stimuli employed by Reagan/Bushes, Ryan voted “no” – claiming they would be ineffectual.  Ryan then aggressively sought stimulus funds for his district, because they would “create jobs”—but lied to his constituents and the press about doing so, all-the-while preaching that Obama’s stimulus was “a failure”.

Welcome to the liars’ club, Josh.

              Bill Hugenberg
              543 Rim Drive
              Grand Junction, CO 81507
Word Count = 300         257-1998