Dem talking points – don’t mention doc fix, passing it now will kill illusion of deficit reduction UPDATE: Dems claim memo is a GOP fake
by Whopper Hound • March 19, 2010 • All Whoppers, Congress, Featured Articles, General, Health Care, Newly Added Stories, Pelosi Whoppers • 2 Comments
As reported by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air and Christ Frates of Politico, a memo was sent from Democratic leadership to staffers on the Hill. The memo tells them what to say and what not to say.
For instance, they are instructed not to use the total of 23 million people that will still be uninsured once the plan is in place, but instead to say 95% are covered. They say that 95% insured sounds better than 23 million uninsured. Also, the memo stated that saying that there would still be 23 million people uninsured after Obamacare is fully in force, would make President Obama’s statement to the joint sessions of Congress in September look bad, when he said that there were 30 million uninsured, which is why they needed to pass Obamacare.
While the memo warned in general about not getting into the specifics of CBO analysis numbers, it specifically warned that staffers and their bosses (the Congressmen) should not discuss the Medicare doc fix at all. The memo stated that they would pass legislation with the doc fix in it after Obamacare was passed, but they did not include it in the Obamacare bill, because it would destroy the bills deficit neutrality.
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has made the scanned memo available here.
Democrats in Congress are claiming the memo did not come from the Democratic leadership. The Talking Points Memo has more details:
A senior Democratic leadership aide told TPMDC in an interview the memo, printed by Politico and leading the Drudge Report this afternoon a few days ahead of the health care vote Sunday, is “a hoax.”
“We have checked with every Democratic office, no one has ever seen it. It did not come out of a Democratic office,” the aide said, adding that media outlets printing the memo have not checked with leadership offices if the memo is authentic. A second Democratic leadership aide confirmed the memo was not sent by the Democrats. A third Democratic aide also said the memo is fake, citing the “draft” stamp and saying no one uses such things.
“If this were a Democratic communications person who wrote this, they should be fired, because this looks like Republican talking points,” the third Democratic aide told TPMDC.
Glad that you’re speaking about it so others is able to know! Definitely will keep in mind. But, what I finally figured out is, you have to reignite the environment that first brought you together and also stop doing a ton of poor decisions we all make naturally if you want to save marriage alone
Just basically wanted to point out I seriously value your work with this particular weblog site as well as the high-quality articles you generate. Most of these type of posting are likely to be exactly what keeps myself going through the evening time. We discovered this particular post right after a good close pal of my very own suggested it to me. My partner and i perform several blogging and site-building personally and I am always grateful to check out others adding top quality data towards online community. I am going to definitely be following and also have book marked your website to my bebo accounts for other people to see.