Michele Bachmann told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Monday night that President Obama told her personally that the Affordable Care Act will replace Medicare.
“A couple of months ago I was in the White House with President Obama. We asked him three times, ‘what’s your plan to make Medicare solvent.’ He mumbled around and didn’t give answer…he said, ‘Obamacare.’ And so what senior citizens don’t realize is that President Obama’s plan for Medicare is they will all go into Obamacare. There won’t be a Medicare going forward under President Obama,” says Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, in this video, courtesy of the good folks at Think Progress, who call this statement and others, “intentionally dishonest.”
“Senior citizens probably don’t realize they’re about to be forced off Medicare and onto the Affordable Care because it’s patently not true,” Think Progress expands. “The health reform law doesn’t eliminate Medicare, not by a long shot, as Bachmann should know since she voted for the House Republican budget, which makes fundamental changes to Medicare decades from now — long after Obama would have supposedly ended it.”
“Moreover, Bachmann’s dishonest fear mongering is eminently ironic considering she was up in arms about ‘liberals..trying to scare Americans about Medicare, and especially senior citizens’ during the debate over the House GOP budget.”
Elsewhere in the O’Reilly interview, Bill asked Bachmann what President Bachmann would do, financially.
“I would call all the members of Congress back into Washington, D.C., and I’d say this: ‘Look, we are going to get this AAA credit rating back, and this is what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to make — we’re going to tell the markets that there will be no default on the debt. We will make sure all the interest payments are made. Second, we’ll tell our military in no uncertain terms they will get their checks. And No. 3, we would make sure that all senior citizens would know they aren’t going to be scared any more. Their current benefits, both on Medicare and Social Security, will be paid’,” replied Bachmann.
Because, of course, that would do it. Not to mention the fact that Bachmann was more than happy to let our credit rating be downgraded, as she has been campaigning for over a month that she would never vote to raise the debt ceiling.
Last month, esteemed conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said Bachmann was being “incredibly irresponsible“Â in her decision to not vote to raise the debt ceiling.