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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely claims 2/3 of Medicare-for-All could be funded by the Pentagon

Syriel

Syriel

Banned
Dec 13, 2017
11,088
Yesterday Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted the following:



Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said:
$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.
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It makes a great soundbite. But much like many of Trump's claims, it's completely false.

The amount spent on national defense over the last 78 years is shy of $18T.

It's great to see a representative with teeth, but is it too much to ask that they vet claims before broadcasting them to the world? We get enough of that with the GOP.

Attack with facts. Not fiction.
 
ItIsOkBro

ItIsOkBro

Happy New Year!!
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
9,540
who's talking about national defense tho? just the op it seems.
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,249
"Could not be traced" aka black projects galore. Let the world have their SR-71 offspring pay for medicare some other way!!
 

VAD

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,553
Yeah fighting fire with fire is a great way to get burnt. I thought she would have been better than this
 
Angelus Errare

Angelus Errare

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,582
Racoon City
Eh seeing as politicians will outright and knowingly lie to further capitalistic and military endeavours that only hurt the middle class

I'm completely fine with her getting this wrong since she'll probably be the only politician that ever addresses the hilarious wasteful spending of DoD, can't saying ANYTHING negative about DoD otherwise you get a gaggle of losers who cry out about how much you hate the military
 
PennyStonks

PennyStonks

Banned
May 17, 2018
4,401
1. She can make mistakes.
2. If the mistakes in Accounting by the US Military were directly proportional to wasted budget she would be right, but
Her statement assumes that any accounting error could directly contribute the national budget. It cant.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
30,744
Ezra Klein had a good response to this

Gillibrand sticking a public option into Sanders' M4A bill was a very savvy move for the reasons he outlines. This is an incremental process.


 
Cat Party

Cat Party

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,469
I don't understand OP's point. The article in the tweet has the $21T figure. Is OP saying that article is lying too?

This thread smacks of bad faith or worse.
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,249
Regarding the figure - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...47/pentagon-accounting-error-medicare-for-all
Critically, however, the passage of the article that Jordan Uhl quoted in the tweet that Ocasio-Cortez cited does not mean that there is $21 trillion in fraudulent or missing DOD spending between 1998 and 2015. Indeed, there simply hasn't been $21 trillion in (nominal) Defense Department spending across the entirety of American history.

The $21 trillion figure represents a summation of poorly documented internal financial transfers, so that the same dollar can be transferred back and forth many times over. That's how you end up with a total amount of mis-documented financial flows that far exceeds the amount of money that's being actually spent.
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ISOM

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
2,684
Don't even know why we need to focus on the minute details of this. The point of her tweet was the gross misuse of money by the military could have gone to paying medicare for all. Just because she didn't get all the facts straight doesn't mean that we need to focus on that and ignore the message. OP's post is like a poor attempt from the right to try and knock down her argument without addressing it
 
Brakke

Brakke

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,798
Didn't Ben Carson made this same error at HUD, claiming some absurd "savings" by cleaning up accounting errors, but the errors mostly washed out to even?
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,249
PogChamp said:
I am confused, what does the $21 trillion figure actually refer to?
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>

signal said:
Regarding the figure - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...47/pentagon-accounting-error-medicare-for-all

Critically, however, the passage of the article that Jordan Uhl quoted in the tweet that Ocasio-Cortez cited does not mean that there is $21 trillion in fraudulent or missing DOD spending between 1998 and 2015. Indeed, there simply hasn't been $21 trillion in (nominal) Defense Department spending across the entirety of American history.

The $21 trillion figure represents a summation of poorly documented internal financial transfers, so that the same dollar can be transferred back and forth many times over. That's how you end up with a total amount of mis-documented financial flows that far exceeds the amount of money that's being actually spent.
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Deleted member 16657

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
10,198
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,249
PogChamp said:
Hm, honestly I feel like the original article was pretty unclear in this matter. When I first read it, it genuinely sounded like the Pentagon had slowly absconded with 21 big ones. Willing to give AOC the benefit of the doubt, as long as she recognizes the mistake I doubt anyone that matters will hold it against her.
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Aliens in Area 51 aren't going to feed themselves.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
30,744
ISOM said:
Don't even know why we need to focus on the minute details of this. The point of her tweet was the gross misuse of money by the military could have gone to paying medicare for all. Just because she didn't get all the facts straight doesn't mean that we need to focus on that and ignore the message. OP's post is like a poor attempt from the right to try and knock down her argument without addressing it
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The issue is that setting up the narrative of "single payer is easy and those cowards wont do it" is super bad because not only is it wrong, when you go to actually do health care reform it sets you up for backlash when you can't give people what your rhetoric is setting them up for.

Doing the GOP "You can have tax cuts AND all this spending" routine is not the answer.
 
BobLoblaw

BobLoblaw

This Guy Helps
Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,353
Don't make shit up, please. We already have an entire party devoted to that.
 
Window

Window

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,287
I think that a lot of posters here made a similar error when a thread on this was posted here. More than being a small slip up I think this indicates a basic lack of knowledge of the federal budget, which really most news reading public should be aware of. This figure is magnitudes higher than any annual expenditure.
 
OP
OP
Syriel

Syriel

Banned
Dec 13, 2017
11,088
VAD said:
Yeah fighting fire with fire is a great way to get burnt. I thought she would have been better than this
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Worked out well for Avenatti, didn't it? Being right is better than being first on the draw with a hot take.

The Kree said:
"She's just new to this."

Oh wait, we hold politicians to standards. Nevermind.
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Yeah, that's what the GOP said about Trump.

Cat Party said:
I don't understand OP's point. The article in the tweet has the $21T figure. Is OP saying that article is lying too?

This thread smacks of bad faith or worse.
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The author of the study she is claiming for the $21T figure even says she's flat out wrong. The article talks about accounting errors. She's pretending that it's actual money spent. Those are two very factually different things.

Sordid Plebeian said:
Gotta be more careful with this stuff when you're an actual representative, spreading lies helps no one
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This. Politicians have a reputation for lying. Getting a new generation into office is amazing, but that doesn't mean we should forgive blatant falsehoods just because the person making them is "on our team."

Yes, people make mistakes, but part of that is admitting when you have made them. She could have deleted the tweet. She could have corrected it. She just let it sit while fact checkers, the media, and Twitter at large pointed it out.

ISOM said:
Don't even know why we need to focus on the minute details of this. The point of her tweet was the gross misuse of money by the military could have gone to paying medicare for all. Just because she didn't get all the facts straight doesn't mean that we need to focus on that and ignore the message. OP's post is like a poor attempt from the right to try and knock down her argument without addressing it
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Because the US hasn't spent $21T on its military in the entire existence of the country. The $32T figure for Medicare-for-All is a 10-year estimate. These aren't "minute details."

She is literally saying that if the US had never spent a cent on the military, ever, we would be able to pay for ~6-6.5 years of Medicare-for-All. That is a horrible way to promote Medicare-for-All.
 
Kin5290

Kin5290

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,390
She's guilty of only reading the headline at least. The article text pays lip service to the idea that some of the "plugs" could have netted each other out.
 

Sandstar

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,748
Maybe we shouldn't put people who've never served a day in office on a pedestal, simply because they tell us things we like to hear. We hate it when the republicans did it with Trump.
 
Loan Wolf

Loan Wolf

Member
Nov 9, 2017
5,106
Rookie mistake AOC, hope she'll rebound. The right-wing propaganda machine is gonna try to drag her hard on that.
 

Deleted member 43

Account closed at user request
Banned
Oct 24, 2017
9,271
Big Baybee said:
I don't think this is a big deal, but she also needs to do better. She has time to improve.
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It's certainly a bit concerning she made this mistake, considering how enormous this number is and how obvious the factual inaccuracy of her statement is if you have any sense of what the federal budget actually looks like.
 
BUNTING1243

BUNTING1243

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,709
It's a mistake, but I'd rather have a million over-enthusiastic mistakes (as long as they're corrected) than the medicore complatency most elected Democrats continue to show to the Republican agenda. AOC is a inspiring fighter with actual progressive ideas and we need more representatives like her.

Also, if you think she's being held to the same standard as the average congressperson is, you're crazy. There are a lot of legit dummies in both parties, they just aren't young and exciting and unabashedly progressive.
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,249
Misunderstandings fly around on Twitter all the time, and AOC's level of policy knowledge is pretty typical for a member of Congress. But this particular flub is telling about progressive frustration over the double standard on military versus non-military spending, and also the fraught state of play regarding the push for a Medicare-for-all program.
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The article that links to is probably correct. It's fine to criticize ignorant or wrong statements but do so knowing that this is probably the norm for congress members.
 
ecnal

ecnal

Member
Oct 27, 2017
180
The obsession with AOC, from both sides, is rather bizarre. The media's hyper-focus on every single thing she says/does is not going to do her any favors over the long run, which isn't an indictment against her -- if the media spent the same amount of time and effort on your average congress-person, they'd all look similarly uninformed (and many would look much worse than AOC).
 
Beer Monkey

Beer Monkey

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
9,308
Threads like this will out so many trolls. If you haven't previously expressed an opinion about the tens of thousands of massive lies that have been told by the GOP in the last two years, I see you.
 

Sandstar

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,748
BUNTING1243 said:
It's a mistake, but I'd rather have a million over-enthusiastic mistakes (as long as they're corrected) than the medicore complatency most elected Democrats continue to show to the Republican agenda. AOC is a inspiring fighter with actual progressive ideas and we need more representatives like her.

Also, if you think she's being held to the same standard as the average congressperson is, you're crazy. There are a lot of legit dummies in both parties, they just aren't young and exciting and unabashedly progressive.
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TLDR: it's okay when someone *I* like does it.
 
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