Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 FactCheck


On Homeland Security: Pay for 65% of Medicare with defense waste (FactCheck: 20%)

Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted on Dec. 2, 2018: "$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.". Is that true?

The price tag of Sen. Berne Sanders' Medicare-for-all plan is estimated at $32 trillion over the next 10 years. The "$21T in errors" comes from "The Nation," a left-leaning magazine. In 2015, for example, the Pentagon reported $6.5 trillion in "unsupported journal voucher adjustments."

But the $21 trillion is the sum of all transactions--both inflows and outflows--for which there is inadequate documentation. The same dollar could be accounted for many times, so it could not be used to pay for 66& of the $32T cost. The CBO estimates a total of $7 trillion in defense spending in the next 10 years--which could yield at most 20% of $32 trillion. We award Four Pinocchios to Ocasio-Cortez

Source: Washington Post Fact-Check on 2018 Congress NY-14 election Dec 4, 2018

The above quotations are from Fact-checking on 2018 gubernatorial and Senate campaigns.
Click here for other excerpts from Fact-checking on 2018 gubernatorial and Senate campaigns.
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Page last updated: May 24, 2020