As we told you last night, Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was called out by people on both sides of the political spectrum after she blatantly misrepresented a Nation article on Pentagon accounting tricks that she claimed could be used to fund Medicare-For-All.
Except, as we told you, the $21 Trillion she’s referring to here doesn’t exist…
$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions “could not be traced, documented, or explained.”
$21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T.
That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.
And that’s before our premiums. https://t.co/soT6GSmDSG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 2, 2018
…it’s an accounting trick! — so ¯_(ツ)_/¯ :
This quote from @Ocasio2018 is from a @thenation article which also says “To be clear, [the report] does not contend all of this $21 trillion was secret or misused… The plugs are found on the positive & the negative sides of the ledger, thus potentially netting each other out.” https://t.co/Ta3NjqDV0l
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 2, 2018
She has since clarified and now says what she really meant was that she’s only demanding the same fiscal details with the Pentagon as we do with health care and education costs:
@TheNation: “DoD has literally been making up numbers in its reports to Congress— knowing that Congress would rely on those reports when deciding how much to give the following year.”
*To clarify, this is to say that we only demand fiscal details w/ health+edu, rarely elsewhere.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
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This, of course, does not address her original claim that the “66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon”:
I can’t help noticing that your clarification doesn’t mention that you were wildly misleading in your suggestion that the Pentagon is wasting $21 trillion. You love to drag others when they screw up, but you seem pretty reticent to admit when you yourself are spreading Fake News.
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 3, 2018
She really should just delete her much-retweeted post and move on:
For those wondering:
In the original study, $21 trillion refers to transfers back-and-forth between accounts. So the same $1 can be counted 1000's of times. It *does not* mean that $21 trillion in total spending was mis-spent.AOC should have realized $21T *spent* is crazy.
— Brian Riedl (@Brian_Riedl) December 3, 2018
Editor’s note: We’ve corrected an error in our headline. It’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, not Alexandria Ocasio-Castro.
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Related:
'Very bad math': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blatantly misrepresents Nation article on Pentagon waste https://t.co/MbqJZ223Rg
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 2, 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Hanukkah greeting includes comparison of Trump to ruler of the Seleucid Empire https://t.co/TNZu5kda2U
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 3, 2018
Well DUH: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accidentally made a case against ‘Medicare For All’ and she didn’t even realize it https://t.co/2j1tr61Vnt
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 2, 2018
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