Is it live? Or is it Memogate?

Posted and then hurriedly taken down from Politico’s Live Pulse blog was a memo that was allegedly from the Democrats and was rife with talking points on how to fight the “Republican smear campaign” against Obamacare.

“The memo hit the inbox about noon Friday, looking for all the world like Democratic talking points for health reform.

Sensitive internal documents find their way into reporters’ inboxes all the time. Sometimes they get published. Sometimes they don’t. The ones that do are the ones that look, sound and feel credible to the reporters covering the story. This one does, with its talk of a full SGR repeal, the JCT estimate and a streamlining of the insurance exchanges.”

The “SGR” referred to in the memo is the sustainable growth rate mechanism, or the ‘doc fix’ that the Democrats are leaving out of the health care reform bills so that they appear more fiscally sound than they are. The ‘doc fix’ is the reduction of payments to physicians that accept Medicare payments. By putting it in the health care bill, it makes it score as much more costly by the Congressional Budget Office. The Dems have decided to leave that little nugget out and vote on it later this year, thereby allowing Obamacare to be less expensive. The memo that found it’s way to Politico talked about that very thing and also about other ways to get around discussing the true aspects of Obamacare.

For example:

“We have increasingly noticed how right wing fringe media are trying to pick apart the CBO score. We cannot emphasize enough: do not allow yourself (or your boss) to get into a discussion of the details of CBO scores and textual narrative. Instead focus only on the deficit reduction and number of Americans covered.” [emphasis theirs]

So there you have it. If indeed this memo is authentic, then you have the Democratic leadership admitting that the CBO scoring is inaccurate. This memo was the subject of an article at the National Review Online, as well and it goes on to instruct Democrats to rely on talking points that Obamacare is “good for physicians,” and to frame the debate on Medicaid in percentages instead of actual numbers of uninsured Americans:

“Under reform-according to Table 2 of CBO’s letter today – cover 95% of American (not counting undocumented workers). It is ideal to use “95 percent” instead of letting the media frame the discussion that 23 million Americans are still uninsured. Some Republicans who are against reform have tried to assert the 23 million are inconsistent with the President’s Sept. 9, 2009 remarks to a joint session of Congress that there are 30 million Americans without health insurance.”

But is this real? Or a hoax? As the piece in Politico points out:

“There would seem to be two possibilities. One is an outright hoax, with some dirty trickster hunched over a keyboard to fashion a memo so realistic-sounding in substance and tone that even seasoned health reporters could get fooled.

The other is a more complicated explanation – perhaps a draft that somehow got into circulation, even before it was widely seen within the party staff and committees, but nonetheless represents the point of view of the Democrats heading into a critical weekend vote.”

The Democrats called on Politico to pull it from their website and labeled the memo a hoax. Of course they would, I mean not even the leadership in the Democratic Party is dumb enough to put their name on this. Either way, this demonstrates how the left works because even though this memo is probably too good to be true, the talking points listed in it are basically what the left has been spouting for the last few days. Even Michele Bachmann as a guest on Mark Levin’s radio show on Friday said that when talking to her Democratic counter parts about the health care bill, they resort to talking points even in discussions with colleagues. That is very sad. To spout talking points to the media is one thing and even though it is annoying, it is understandable. But to have to fall back on them when discussing legislation with other Congressmen is just very, very disheartening to hear.

Now more than ever, we need to make the next election cycle count. It is time to run these far left, talking point spewing, spineless, faux-moderate Democrats out of town on a rail.

Full memo here.