Democrats Plan to Gut Medicare to Bankroll $1.9 Trillion COVID Spending Spree

Using the COVID-19 epidemic as an excuse, Democrats are ramming through Congress a $1.9 trillion spending bill that has little do with the outbreak.

But jam-packing a bill with liberal wish list items like high-speed rail to wealthy communities and massive bailouts to labor unions that fund Democrats comes with a cost, and they have a plan to pay for it.

Gutting Medicare.

“House Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill would trigger deep cuts to programs such as Medicare unless Congress works around a 2010 law intended to curb federal deficits, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday,” The Washington Times reports.

Under an Obama-era law, Congress must find a way to pay for the spending without fully borrowing the total.

“CBO projected that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would have to issue a directive to cut mandatory spending by $381 billion in fiscal 2022, absent other offsets or waivers,” the Times reports.

Much of the cutting would fall on Medicare, funded by mandatory withdrawals from Americans paychecks, leaving the government program as the only way many can afford health care in their later years.

“That translates to $36 billion in cuts to Medicare. The 2010 law limits the reductions in Medicare spending and exempts a range of other programs, including Social Security,” the Times reports.

The only way to avoid the cuts is to declare the bill “emergency spending,” which is made harder politically by the fact little of the bill has anything to do with the COVID-19 outbreak and much of the spending doesn’t take place for over a year.

The bill passed the House and is currently in the Senate.

Even liberal Republicans are speaking out against it.

In an op/ed written for USA Today, John Kasich, a “Never Trump” Republican former Ohio governor, slammed the bill for its massive price tag, explosive effect on the national debt and its priority on unrelated pork.

“(M)oney to help those with real needs will likely add up to less than half of the bloated spending that’s been crammed into this package in the guise of “relief.” Every unwarranted, special-interest dollar stuffed into this bill adds an additional burden to our already unsustainable national debt. Yet few Americans seem to mind. The debt has disappeared as a public concern in a national fit of amnesia — even as it grows by leaps and bounds.”

If Democrats get their way, the sick and elderly would pay the price for rewarding liberal political allies