Sen. John Kerry: We cut $550 billion from Medicare

by NW Spotlight

Rob Cornilles, running in the special election to replace David Wu in Congress, calls out his opponent for supporting $500 billion in cuts to Medicare

At his general election campaign kickoff, Rob Cornilles called out his opponent for supporting the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), with its $500 billion cut to Medicare: “Senator Bonamici says she supports the $500 billion cut to Medicare passed last year, which will come largely out of a program called Medicare Advantage.”

The very biased PolitiFact1 at the Oregonian and the Democratic Party of Oregon2 jumped to Bonamici’s defense. After admitting that “The Affordable Care Act does reduce Medicare spending by $500 billion”, PolitiFact went on to rate Rob Cornilles’ statement as false, after further acknowledging that the Oregonian itself had written about the $500 billion cut to Medicare back in July 2009.

Well, in addition to the Oregonian’s 2009 article, Rob Cornilles got support from an unlikely source: Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the 2004 Democratic candidate for President. An article that ran recently on Newsmax mentioned Kerry’s remarks in the Sunday talk shows: “Sen. John Kerry, [Sen. Jon] Kyl’s Democratic counterpart on the supercommittee, tried to rebut that assertion from the senator from Arizona by claiming that Democrats cut $550 billion from Medicare in Obamacare without raising taxes.”

Sen. Kerry can be seen stating that “We Cut $550 Billion In The Health Care Act From Medicare” on Meet The Press, and stating that “We just cut $550 billion out of Medicare during the Health Care reform Act” in an interview on Fox.

Other sources:

1Politifact
2Democratic Party of Oregon

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