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Debate joined on Medicare; Romney, Obama go at it
WASHINGTON (AP) - Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama in person and in TV advertising Tuesday of cutting Medicare "to pay for Obamacare," launching a strong counterattack to Democratic charges that he and running mate Paul Ryan would radically remake the popular health care program that serves tens of millions of seniors.
The charge drew a blistering response from Obama's campaign, which labeled the ad dishonest and hypocritical.
At a campaign stop in Beallsville, Ohio, Romney said that Obama "has taken $716 billion out of the Medicare trust fund. He's raided that trust fund." Romney went on to say: "And you know what he did with it? He's used it to pay for Obamacare, a risky, unproven, federal takeover of health care. And If I'm president of the United States, we're putting the $716 billion back."
In a rebuttal issued shortly after the Romney TV ad was released, Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith said the president's health care law did not "cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit, and Mitt Romney embraced the very same savings when he promised he'd sign Paul Ryan's budget. ...The truth is that the Romney-Ryan budget would end Medicare as we know it."
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