Early last week, Bill O’Reilly made a shocking attack on Alan Colmes over the sequester and called him a "liar" for correctly saying that President Obama has offered to make spending cuts. O’Reilly was so tyrannical and bullying that even John Stossel later told him he had been  “obnoxious” and “out of line.” Kirsten Powers told O’Reilly, “You need to admit you’re wrong.” But Laura Ingraham, subbing for O’Reilly on Friday night (3/8/13), used the “Tip of the Day” segment to falsely argue that O’Reilly was correct. Even worse, she indirectly scolded Colmes by lecturing to her viewers, “When you prepare for a debate, have the facts on your side.” FoxNews.com echoed the message by calling the brief segment, Have the facts on your side when preparing for a debate. In reality, it's O'Reilly and Ingraham who don't have the facts on their side.

Ingraham said:

When you prepare for a debate, have the facts on your side. Unless you live on Mars, by now you know that O’Reilly got into it with Alan Colmes earlier this week. Friends were emailing me about it. Bill challenged Alan to come up with a concrete proposal to cut spending. Bill’s point, the president will not put forth any specifics. Well, today, the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal examines the president’s plan and draws the same conclusion. There are no meaningful specifics in it. So here’s the tip: read that editorial in the Journal, headlined, “Obama’s Not So Grand Offer.” You’ll learn a lot and you’ll see exactly why Bill got so worked up.

Well, Laura, I read the editorial. Nowhere does it say that Obama offered “no meaningful specifics.” What it complains about is that Obama is offering “only token spending cuts.” But specifics? There are quite a few specifics. For example:

Mr. Obama endorses another round of arbitrary cuts for hospitals and other providers, to the tune of about $30 billion. He favors new price controls for the Medicare drug benefit for a $140 billion pop. He wants a new program to “encourage efficient care after a hospital stay,” as if the central planners can issue a decree and care will suddenly become more efficient.None of this will make a difference in practice.

Mr. Obama’s offer would ask the most affluent seniors to contribute more for benefits and tweak the program’s cost-sharing system for everyone else, but even this means-testing is very modest. The White House’s favorite health economist, Jonathan Gruber of MIT, estimates that better cost-sharing incentives for Medicare beneficiaries can save $125 billion. Mr. Obama’s version saves $35 billion.

In a similar vein, PolitiFact ruled a comparable statement by Speaker of the House John Boehner as “Pants on Fire.”

It didn’t take us long to find the White House plan. We found it on the White House home page by clicking the prominent button that says “SEE THE PLAN.” It leads to a page titled “A Balanced Plan to Avert the Sequester and Reduce the Deficit.”



The plan cites deficit reduction of the past two years, which has included a $600 billion tax hike on wealthy households and $1.4 trillion in discretionary spending cuts. Going forward, Obama proposes $200 billion in reduced defense spending, new efficiencies in health care that would save another $400 billion, eliminating some agriculture subsidies and reforming the postal service, among other proposals. On the revenue side, the plan calls for closing tax loopholes and limiting deductions to 28 percent for the wealthiest Americans.

O’Reilly and Ingraham may not like the cuts Obama is proposing but it’s just not true he has not offered any specifics. Ingraham really needs to take her own advice and get the facts on her side before jumping into this debate. And as Kirsten Powers might say, now two of them need to admit they’re wrong.