A Republican bobblehead I saw on television last night kept repeating the mantra that “The CBO says Medicare will go broke in nine years.” I googled for this, and all I got were a bunch of quotes from Republicans saying the CBO says Medicare will go broke in nine years, with no links to a source at the CBO. It’s an unsourced talking point, in other words.

I assume that some worker drone in the right-wing think tanks was able to extract a claim that Medicare will go broke in nine years from some CBO document, but whether that’s what the CBO actually thinks is, of course, another matter.

I went to the Congressional Budget Office site and found no document explicitly saying that Medicare will go broke in nine years. I did find the “March 2011 Medicare Baseline” analysis, which to me might as well be written in Greek. If anyone can explain what these numbers are saying, I’d appreciate it. But I’m not seeing anything that jumps out at me and says Medicare will be broke after 2020 on this chart.

It’s obvious the “broke in nine years” claim is going to be a big factor in the Republicans’ defense for destroying Medicare. I wish someone with the time and expertise to follow up on this would figure out how and where they are getting this claim and what the CBO actually says.