Reality Check: Obama Cuts Social Security and Medicare by Much More Than the GOP

On Social Security: Ryan didn't cut Social Security by a penny. The president has proposed cutting the program's spending by $130 billion, by adopting a slower-growing measure of inflation. On Medicare: Ryan's budget kept Obamacare's Medicare cuts and added another $127 billion. His budget projects $6.74 trillion in Medicare spending between 2014 and 2023. Obama cuts even deeper with $380 billion in cuts below his baseline, and his budget projects $6.67 trillion in Medicare spending over the same period. Upshot: Obama's ten-year Medicare budget is $70 billion below the GOP, and his announced cuts are about $250 billion deeper than the GOP. (See below for brief explainer on differences.*)

In fact, as Michael Linden at the Center for American Progress (who helped me with many of these numbers), pointed out, Obama's new proposal would mean about $1 trillion in lower Medicare spending in this decade compared to projections from before he took office. That includes the effects of slowing health-care inflation after the Great Recession. That's a 13 percent reduction!

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TheDemSocialist said:

So much for that "progressive, socialist" president.

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