Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the $ 21 trillion accounting error of the Pentagon

The US military budget is so monstrous that it contains accounting errors that could fund two-thirds of the cost of a single-payer health insurance system. All Americans could see an unlimited number of doctors at no extra charge. At least, it's a notion that is spreading on Twitter on the left and approved and amplified by the newly elected representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the greatest sensations of the Democrats in 2018 and an undeniable master of the fine art of staying in the eyes of the public.

Unfortunately, that's not true. The idea has spread like a phone game from a Nation's article to the US Congress by losing a crucial point of detail: The Pentagon's accounting mistakes are truly huge, but they're also simply Accounting errors – they do not represent real money that can be spent on something else.

Misunderstandings constantly fly on Twitter, and the level of knowledge of the politics of AOC is pretty typical for a congressman. But this flub in particular speaks of the progressive frustration engendered by the dual standard of military spending versus non-military spending, as well as the difficult situation in promoting a Medicare-for program. -all.

Proponents of this vision have the political wind behind them and continue to deploy the idea of ​​effectively gaining the party's internal arguments without actually advancing on the key hurdles to drafting a Medicare bill -for-all that could become law. That said, to the extent that the goal is to take political power rather than enacting concrete legislation, it is probably for the better.

The Pentagon's Mystery: $ 21 Trillion, explains

The Underlying Article of Dave Lindorff in The Nation Who Launches This is a Report of Investigation into the Department's Accounting Practices of the defense. Lindorff reveals that the Pentagon's accounting is quite weak, that the ministry continues to engage in external audits, that funds are transferred from one account to another without proper oversight and that the overall documentation of what is actually happening with the vast budget of the Pentagon is extremely poor.

Lindorff goes beyond these observations by alleging that what is happening is akin to deliberate fraud, the purpose of which is to persuade Congress to increase the appropriations beyond what would otherwise be approved.

However, the passage in the article that Jordan Uhl quoted in the tweet that Ocasio-Cortez cited does not mean that it There is $ 21 trillion in fraudulent or missing DOD expenses. between 1998 and 2015. Indeed, the (nominal) expenditures of the Ministry of Defense have simply not been $ 21 billion in all American history.

The figure of $ 21 trillion represents a sum of poorly documented internal financial transfers, so that the same dollar can be transferred several times. This leads to a total amount of poorly documented financial flows that far exceeds the amount actually spent.

That this is happening certainly tells a story. And it is almost certainly true that if another agency so blurred its internal financial controls, the US institution would not tolerate it. But there is not a $ 21 trillion pot of money that can be used to fund a comprehensive health insurance program, even though the US spends a lot on the military.

The US Army is very expensive

President Donald Trump, echoing the previous calls of Barack Obama and George W. Bush but making them much more forceful, has complained time and time again that the American allies of NATO in Europe were not respecting their commitments. spend 2% of the national income on their armies.

Meanwhile, the United States spends more than 2% of its GDP on the quest for global military hegemony.

In a nifty Washington Post article this summer, Jeff Stein asked what America could afford if it reduced its forces to that target level of 2%. Reducing military spending by 3.5% of current GDP would release about $ 3 trillion over a decade. That would be enough to halve child poverty ($ 1 trillion), eliminate tuition fees in public colleges ($ 750 billion), clean lead paint and contaminated soil in the country ($ 400 billion) ), to make pre-kindergarten accessible to all poor children ($ 250). billion), and much remains to build a wall at the US-Mexican border and at least modestly, reduce the budget deficit.

Ideas of this magnitude are generally considered unaffordable, but military spending increases that are neither compensated nor "paid for" do not go to Congress – with the votes of conservative and centrist members who are less enthusiastic about it. With regard to the idea of ​​going into debt to improve the well-being of children.

That said, the US health care sector is one of the things that best surpasses the US military. And with half of the private sector's current spending on health care (and a decent share of the public sector paid for by state and local governments), including it in federal books would constitute a very important change and that the practical impact vary greatly depending on how exactly you did it.

Medicare-for-all has a good topic for discussion, but no plan

Putting the entire health care system in federal books would be a big problem because a huge amount of money is already spent in the health care sector. Medicare for all would cost more than $ 30 trillion over a decade because the federal government would assume financial responsibility for a huge cost center.

This is not a new expense from an economic point of view, as would be a boundary wall, a new highway, or a regional rail system.

In fact, advocates of Medicare-for-all argue that by making the federal government a monopsony buyer of health care services, it would be possible to lower prices and make overall savings.

This shows quite clearly that you could write a plan to fund the type of health system that Ocasio-Cortez (and Bernie Sanders) were talking about, even though this plan could not mobilize $ 21 trillion. in Pentagon Ghost Money as the main source of income.

That being said, at some point you can not just say how it is possible to fund the program you prefer. You should instead write a specific funding mechanism – including the possibility of financing it with a debt – and then get the votes of Congress to pass this specific bill rather than another.

Forty months ago, when Sanders' presidential campaign was more of a curiosity than an influential political movement, the vagueness on this point was harmless. The name of the game was to generate political support for an idea that had little support and to adjust the details later.

What is striking, however, is that no progress has been made in the treatment of details. That is why one of the country's most prominent supporters, Medicare-for-all, tweeted wrong information about potential payment solutions: it has no specific canonical proposition on which it can go. focus.

Medicare-to-all promoters may not care

In purely political terms, escaping the specific question of pay is probably the wisest solution. In Vermont, the idea of ​​a health insurance scheme for all at the state level was very popular until the legislature turned to taxes, at which time the consensus it's collapsed.

And to defend the tactics of the Medicare-to-all brigade, it's not as if Trump's campaign promises or the various budget roadmaps of Speaker Paul Ryan, had no mathematical meaning. You can go very far in American politics based on good slogans and a broad vision that captivates an audience.

But most importantly, Ryan's main ideas never materialized because they made no sense. it turned out that there was no practical way to accomplish them. Similarly, the obvious absurdity of claiming that Mexico would pay for a border wall did not prevent Trump from becoming president – but that prevented him from paying for a border wall.

If Medicare-for-All supporters come to power in 2021, after five or six years of eluding the difficult question of how (or not) to offset expenses, no easy solution will magically arise . obtain a consensus after President Sanders' inauguration.

That said, the people who pushed Medicare for all to its current level of importance are not stupid and are probably aware of all this.

And RoseAnn DeMoro, who, at the head of the National Union of Nurses, has probably done more than anyone over the years to shape the health insurance debate for all, made an interesting statement this year. weekend at a rally of Bernie's faithful. According to journalist David Weigel, when reporters asked her if she had any contact with other 2020 candidates, she simply said, "There are no other candidates."

Following the 2016 elections, many other ambitious Democrats, including Sense Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren, have approved Medicare-for-all in the same form as Sanders. has actually impressed Medicare's followers only to confirm their admiration for Sanders, who they believe should be President, given that this is the purpose of the case and that the most useful goal is to remain vague , vagueness will probably continue to be the order of the day.