In 2010, Democrats needed money to pay for Obamacare. They found $20.7 billion of it in a Medicare account Congress had set up two years earlier to improve traditional Medicare.

The account was called the Medicare Improvement Fund. Seniors never saw a dime of that $20.7 billion.

This week, President Trump went back to the same fund and found $2 billion in it. He's sending it to seniors.

Starting around October 8, about 20.8 million Americans enrolled in Original Medicare Part B will get $90 each to help with their premiums. Most will get it by direct deposit from the Social Security Administration. Anyone without direct deposit on file will get a Treasury Department check by late October. Nobody has to apply. If you qualify, the money just shows up, followed by a letter from the President.

"I am pleased to announce that my Administration will, immediately, begin sending 'Checks' of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums," Trump posted. "I pledged to protect and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and we are doing just that for America's Seniors."

He also didn't hide what he thinks of the fund. He called it "a pointless 'Slush Fund' that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs."

The record backs him up. Congress created the Medicare Improvement Fund in 2008. In the eighteen years since, it has worked as a piggy bank. Lawmakers have reached in again and again to "offset" new spending, an accounting move that lets them claim a bill is paid for. CMS's own fact sheet says so.

According to the White House, no administration has ever made a single payment to anyone out of it.

Meanwhile, the standard Part B premium has climbed past $200 a month. A $90 rebate covers close to half of one month's bill, paid for by a fund that was supposed to be for seniors in the first place.

Expect the usual objection that the president can't just do this. Even Larry Levitt of KFF, a health policy shop nobody would mistake for a MAGA outfit, admits that "the Medicare Improvement Fund language is quite broad and gives substantial discretion to the administration." Congress wrote the authority into law in 2008. Trump is the first president to use it for the people it was named after.

Here's who qualifies. You have to live in the United States and be enrolled in Original Medicare Part B. You're out if Medicaid already pays your premiums, or if you pay the higher Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount, the IRMAA surcharge on higher earners.

Medicare Advantage enrollees don't qualify either. This is the fund for traditional Medicare, so the money goes to traditional Medicare. If you aren't sure which one you have, call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). Questions about the payment itself go to Social Security at 1-800-772-1213.

The Medicare checks are separate from the roughly one million $500 refund checks already going out to Americans who were overcharged for Affordable Care Act coverage. They're also separate from the $5,000 "Trump Dividend" the president has floated, which depends on Republicans holding Congress in November.

The Medicare money needed no vote, no new law and no committee hearings. It was already there, with seniors' names on it.

For eighteen years, Washington treated the Medicare Improvement Fund as a place to borrow from. The only big withdrawal anyone remembers went to Obamacare.

The next one lands in 20.8 million bank accounts on October 8.