2018 FactCheck: on Homeland Security

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Pay for 65% of Medicare with defense waste (FactCheck: 20%)

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