Lying politicians are nothing new in American politics, so we do well to always recall Jonathan Swift's warning that "falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it." But the good news is that in the age of the internet, there is no reason why truth cannot also fly.
Thus, today is the first installment of what will likely make frequent appearances in these pages: "When Reality Bites — a Lying Politician With Actual Facts." In today's edition, Reality Bites Sen. Jon Ossoff and Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrats, respectively, from Georgia and Maryland. Do not be surprised when future installments feature Republicans, because lying in politics is an equal opportunity character flaw.
Now, Ossoff has been pushing this falsehood as fact: "The Medicaid program has been gutted... cut to make room in the budget for a tax cut that went overwhelmingly to top earners. Our priorities are out of whack right now." The Georgia Democrat was referring to the historic tax cuts included in President Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) of 2025.
Ossoff pointed to hospitals, nursing homes and medical centers in Georgia that he claimed were being forced to cut back on critically needed services as a result of Trump's tax cuts for the rich.
So, Sen. Ossoff, meet Just Facts, a non-partisan, non-profit government and politics research watchdog that thrives on comparing the facts with spurious claims such as yours regarding Medicaid.
Here's what Just Facts found:
"IN FACT, the BBB only cuts Medicaid for able-bodied loafers, illegal immigrants, other aliens, fraudsters, and states like California that exploited the program. Meanwhile, the portion of the U.S. population receiving Medicaid has more than doubled since 2000, while the poverty rate is the same (emphasis added)."
Here are the specifics, according to Just Facts' researchers:
- To receive Medicaid, the BBB requires “nonpregnant, nondisabled adults, aged 19 through 64” who don’t have a “dependent child under the age of 14” to “complete a minimum of 80 hours” per “month” of “work,” “community service, or enrollment in an education program.”
- The BBB prevents illegal immigrants and other aliens from receiving Medicaid under executive fiats that make them “lawfully present” for the purpose of receiving government benefits, even though they don’t have “legal status” to be in the United States.
- The BBB contains a range of fraud prevention measures such as “address verification” and “ensuring deceased individuals do not remain enrolled” in Medicaid, which has the second-highest level of improper payments among all federal programs.
- The BBB stops states such as California from using a tax kickback scheme to obtain more federal money for Medicaid, which is fungible and can be used to fund comprehensive Medicaid coverage for illegal immigrants, as California does for 1.7 million aliens.
- The BBB lowers the max copay for Medicaid recipients who are not poor from $100 to $35, and requires states that charge them no copays to at least charge them something, in accord with gold standard studies which found that no-copay Medicaid coverage increases expensive visits to emergency rooms for “conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings.”
- The portion of the U.S. population receiving Medicaid has risen from 12% in 2000 to 26% in 2024, while the poverty rate was 11% in 2000 and 2024.
In other words, the Georgia senator is free to think Medicaid is being cut, when it fact it's being reformed to rid it of waste, fraud and abuse, so that needed services are better able to reach those in need.
He's also free to think pigs can fly when we're not watching them, and that D.B. Cooper spent all that ransom money he got from hijacking a Northwest Orient commercial airliner and is now flipping burgers alongside Elvis in an obscure little town in Oregon.
And speaking of tall tales, that brings us to the Maryland Democrat, Mr. Raskin, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, who would have you believe that Trump has established a “huge slush fund” for his “private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021.”
Uh, no, Mr. Raskin. Here are the specifics, according to Just Facts' researchers:
- As explained in the Washington and Lee Law Review, “American prosecutors exercise almost limitless discretion in a series of decisions affecting individuals embroiled in the criminal justice system,” such as “whether to accept or decline a case,” “what crimes should be charged and the number of counts,” “whether to engage in plea negotiations and the terms of an acceptable agreement,” “all aspects of pretrial and trial strategy,” and “in many cases,” the “punishment that will be imposed upon conviction.”
- Biden’s DOJ used that discretion to prosecute hundreds of non-violent J6 protestors for being in the Capitol for as little as “two minutes.”
- Biden’s DOJ also prosecuted more than a hundred J6 protestors for “obstructing an official proceeding,” a federal law that was created to criminalize the destruction of evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (6–3) that these prosecutions were illegal and wrongfully gave “prosecutors broad discretion to seek a 20-year maximum sentence for acts Congress saw fit to punish with far shorter sentences.”
- While Biden’s DOJ was carrying out those prosecutions, Biden invited to the White House and lauded Tennessee Democrats who were expelled from the TN legislature for disrupting an official proceeding of that body.
- Likewise, Democrats defended Congressman Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm during Congressional proceedings, even though video showed it was not an accident as Bowman claimed, and that he was trying to obstruct a vote of Congress.
- Biden’s DOJ prosecuted Trump for citing data from a PhD-vetted Just Facts study and using it to carry out “official actions” within his “conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” (struck down 6–3 by the Supreme Court).
- Biden’s DOJ and FBI raided the home of Donald Trump and prosecuted him for having classified documents, even though Joe Biden had classified documents in his home, but wasn’t charged because he was an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
- Biden’s DOJ and FBI raided the home of a pro-lifer and prosecuted him for shoving an abortion clinic worker who was harassing one of his children (charges dismissed by a jury after less than an hour of deliberation).
- Biden’s FBI alleged that “thousands of people violently attacked the U.S. Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021 to “block our democracy’s peaceful transfer of power,” even though only 13 of the protesters were convicted of or pled guilty to seditious conspiracy, and none of them were charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.
- Obama’s FBI officials texted each other derogatory remarks about Trump as he overtook Hillary Clinton in the polls, launched a full investigation into Trump’s orbit based on “unvetted hearsay information” that proved to be baseless, offered a former foreign spy $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money for dirt on Trump, and then repeatedly misled a court to get warrants to spy on Trump’s advisor by submitting “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported” allegations to the court, including “at least 17 significant errors or omissions.”
- In a 2024 lawsuit settlement, Biden’s DOJ gave $2 million of taxpayer money to the FBI agents who targeted Trump while exchanging numerous messages expressing their hatred of him and stating that he’s “not going to become president, right? Right?!” “No. No, he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
- After campaigning for the office of Manhattan District Attorney by declaring that the “most important” thing he could do was hold Trump “accountable” for “lawlessness,” Alvin Bragg prosecuted Trump with a type of crime never before charged in the history of the nation. In this case, the jury pool was 86.8% Biden voters, the judge donated to Biden, and the prosecutor was a Soros-backed Democrat.
- After campaigning for the office of New York attorney general on a platform of prosecuting and suing Trump, Letitia James falsely charged Trump with inflating the value of Mar-a-Lago, in the only known case in New York history in which a “big business” was “threatened with a shutdown” despite no “obvious victims” or “major losses.”
- In that case, James sued Trump while asking the court to fine him “at least” $250 million, and Democrat Judge Arthur Engoron obliged, but a New York State appeals court rescinded the entire penalty for being “an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
- This week, Trump’s DOJ announced a lawsuit settlement with Trump that would establish an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” with $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to provide “monetary relief” to “victims of lawfare and weaponization” while barring any “monetary payment or damages of any kind” to Trump and his family.
- Trump’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, told U.S. Senators that no one who harmed police officers is eligible for the settlement fund, but he didn’t rule out compensation for non-violent J6 protestors.
- Condemning the settlement and those who may receive it, Raskin alleged that Trump called “neo-Nazis” “very fine people” and refused to “condemn” other “white supremacists.” In reality, Trump called the neo-Nazis “very bad people,” stated that he “condemned” them twice, and has denounced white supremacy, racism, the KKK, and leaders of these movements at least 38 times.
- After Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that likely killed millions of people and then lied about it to Congress, Biden gave him a “full and unconditional pardon” for “any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in” since 2014.
Now, who will be the next lying politician to be introduced to reality here on the pages of PJ Media? Until next time ...