Todd Akin thinks he’s being treated unfairly – after all, he only made a “six second mistake” when he mispoke about lady parts, rape and the right to chose not to carry your rapist’s baby:
“My six-second mistake is well known. But Claire McCaskill’s six-year record is something you should know. “McCaskill voted with Obama 98 percent of the time. She cast the deciding vote to pass Obamacare, that cuts Medicare by over $700 billion dollars. She voted for Obama’s budget-busting stimulus spending and raised our taxes but didn’t pay her own.
What’s this election about? Saving our country.
I’m glad that Akin feels so sanguine about his little misadventure in expressing his deepest beliefs. He wants us to think that Claire McCaskill’s six year record more than balances his little error – and maybe to the reality-challenged rigtwingers who form his base that’s the case. Who can account for lunatics anyway?
However, in common with Missouri GOP spokesperson, Mr. Prouty, whom we referenced in a previous post, Brother Todd has failed to get his facts straight. He thinks Claire McCaskill has voted with Obama 98% of the time. First of all what does 98% of the time mean? Much of what Claire McCaskill and other senators have voted on is routine, or otherwise so removed from the scope of partisan distinction that it’s almost impossible to make quantitative statements of this sort – and if you do, I’d really want to know what your criteria is. We’ve already noted (and documented) the fact elsewhere that McCaskill’s voting record is a lot more complex than can be digested in simple soundbites – and it’s far from always being congenial with a progressive, or even the Obama administration agenda (and, FYI, they’re not always the same thing either).
But where Todd, who likes to claim that he’s an honest man, really oversteps the boundaries of truth is when he echoes the dishonest claims about Medicare that are also being promulgated by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. As I am now writing for the umpteenth hundred time, the $750 billion that Obamacare cuts from Medicare are mostly administrative costs, including subsidies to private supplemental insurance programs with inflated costs. These supplemental programs will not go away, but will be tied to quality metrics so that we get a better bang for the buck. As The Swampland notes, The Obamacare cuts that Claire McCaskill supported will not change the program’s benefits:
The idea, however, that the Affordable Care Act struck a dangerous blow to Medicare that will change the program in fundamental ways is untrue. Under the new law, Medicare will remain a wildly popular, public single-payer health insurance system that provides comprehensive coverage to millions of Americans.
Nor does pious Brother Todd tell us that he voted for the Ryan budget that makes those same identical cuts, plows the money’s into the deficit (where it’s hardly a drop in the bucket) instead of using it to expand benefits, and then, after taking the Medicare loose change, voucherizes Medicare, essentially destroying the program for current as well as the future retirees who are the only ones Ryan says will be affected. Pretty devastating. And just like the lying Romney/Ryan duo, Todd hasn’t got the cojones to admit what he’s proposing to do with Medicare, but tries to lay it off on Claire McCaskill. For shame, Rep. Akin.
Oh, and by the way – there is a consensus among economists is that the stimulus did work. But I’ll give Brother Todd a pass on his naysaying piece of GOP BS on the topic since he probably gets his economic information from the same sources who told him about the birds and bees.