Politifact Votes Leftist Attacks on Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan 'Lie of the Year

The Pulitzer Prize-winning factcheck website of the St. Petersburg Times, PolitiFact.com, voted on the biggest lie of the 2011 and the winner is..."Republicans voted to end Medicare."

The false claims were spouted by Democrats and others on the left after House Budget Committee Charman Rep. Paul Ryan introduced a budget. The House proposal would purportedly significantly reduce debt by providing government subsidies for, and privatizing, Medicare for those under 55.

After the Democrats voted against the budget, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care "because Republicans voted to end Medicare." PolitiFact writes:

"After two years of being pounded by Republicans with often false charges about the 2010 health care law, the Democrats were turning the tables.

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year."

PolitiFact has not shown any favoritism for Republicans in the past. In 2009 the winner of the "Lie of the Year" was the Republicans’ charge that the Democrats’ health care plan included "death panels." In 2010, it was that the plan was a "government takeover of health care." Despite this, the left has come out in hasty denouncement of this year's award.

"It seems foolish to have to parse the meaning of the word 'end,' but if there’s a program, and it’s replaced with a different program, proponents brought an end to the original program," liberal blogger Steve Benen wrote at the Washington Monthly. "That’s what the verb means."

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman echoed similar complaints about the lie's wording, and writes in his blog angrily that PolitiFact has become balanced:  "So they’ve bent over backwards to appear 'balanced'— and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant."

To quote Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Morning Joe today, "cry me a river."