1.  President Obama has proposed big cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to finance his plan for government-run medicine for everyone.

In his weekly radio address, the President has proposed to reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending by an additional $313 billion over 10 years that could be used for a major overhaul of the nation's health system.

As reported by the website CQ, the online division of Congressional Quarterly, these cuts are in addition to the ones he has previously proposed for Medicare.

Altogether, Obama wants to cut $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, with most of it from Medicare.

The Medicare reductions would be in payments for hospitals, skilled nursing, rehabilitation facilities, long-term care, medical devices such as MRIs and CT scans, outpatient treatment facilities and other providers, and prescription drugs.

CQ wrote, "Administration officials predicted the latest cost-cutting would extend the solvency of Medicare's benchmark hospital insurance trust fund by seven years and reduce beneficiaries' Medicare Part B premiums (physician services and outpatient care)."

The Associated Press stated that hospitals, medical technicians, and other providers were objecting to the President's proposed reductions in Medicare spending.

Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, said, "Payment cuts are not reform."

The Access to Medical Imaging Coalition, which represents the manufacturers and users of MRIs and CTs, issued a statement saying the President's proposal "will impair access to diagnostic imaging services and result in patients' delaying or forgoing life-and-cost savings imaging procedures." 

Reuters indicated that the $622 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts were "more than some Democrats are willing to swallow.  House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel told reporters after a closed-door meeting with fellow Democrats on the panel, ‘We don't think we can do all the things he [Obama] is recommending.  We think his 600 [billion] is our 400 [billion].'"

House Republican leader John Boehner said, "Serious changes should not be rushed through Congress as part of a new government-run program that will raise taxes and make health care more expensive."

2.  The raid of the Social Security Trust Fund has been interrupted, as the recession has temporarily eliminated the surplus in what is left over after payroll taxes are received and benefits paid out.

At the end of May 2009, the federal government owed the Social Security Trust Fund (old age and disability) a total of more than $2.456 trillion.  However, the previous month, the Trust Fund had IOUs of $2.457 trillion--a very slight, but unprecedented, decline from one month to the next.

In Fiscal Year 2008, more than $185 billion was borrowed from Social Security and spent on other federal programs.