At least Move to Massachusetts Made Sense

Andrea Saul makes an absurd argument

When talking to Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP

who wrote

"By repealing [Obama's Medicare budget cuts], Romney would move the program's insolvency eight years closer, toward the end of what would be his first term in office."

She said

"The idea that restoring funding to Medicare could somehow hasten its bankruptcy is on its face absurd," said spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

OK now let me try to explain this slowly -- The Medicare Plan A trust funds, like many entities, has income and expenditures. The cuts in question are cuts of expenditures. "Funding" is income (you know money coming in not money coming out). The ACA increases the plan A trust fund's income by increasing Medicare plan A taxes paid by the rich. Repealing the ACA would hasten the exhaustion of the trust fund in two ways, by reducing funding (by eliminating the surtax) and by increasing expenditure.

Andrea Saul seems to think that spending is income. So I guess she thinks that we could eliminate the budget deficit with huge new spending programs.

The horrible thing is that she is doing the job which she was hired to do. When she noted that the uninsured would get health insurance in Massachusetts due to Romney care that was a huge gaffe, because it is true and relevant to the debate. Now when she says that expenditures are income she is confusing the confusable and causing all well informed jaws* to drop leaving anyone with any clue about anything babbling and blogging at excessive length.



* I understand that the general view is that our knowledge is stored in are brains not our jaws. I am well aware that the set of well informed jaws is empty and note that, in particular, it includes no well informed non dropping jaws at the moment.