Speaking with host Jon Lovett on Pod Save America, New York Democratic socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked for details as to how America would pay for her socialist dreams, such as universal healthcare and free college tuition. Although she spouted for roughly two minutes, the answer Ocasio-Cortez offered was this: she has no idea.
Lovett prompted the descent into puffery and sound and fury signifying nothing by stating:
We don’t talk about what defense costs; we’re about to hit a trillion dollars in debt because of the corporate tax cuts; yet when we talk about pre-K, healthcare, college, suddenly it’s unrealistic because of the cost. And it’s not just bad faith Republicans that make that argument; you hear it from Democrats as well. What’s your response to that?
Ocasio-Cortez started like a house afire: “Well, I think it’s that exact same thing.”
That makes it abundantly clear.
She continued, “It’s that we… you know they say, ‘How are you going to pay for it?’ as though they haven’t used those same ways to pay for unlimited wars, to pay for trillion dollar tax cuts and tax cut extensions. They use these mechanisms to pay for these things all the time.”
What “same ways”? What “mechanisms”?
But we digress.
Ocasio-Cortez waxed eloquent with more brilliantisms: “They only want to know — it just seems like their pockets are empty when we’re talking about education and investing in human capital in the United States: education, healthcare, housing, and investing in the middle class.”
It would seem the students who want to game the system by getting college education for free are the ones with empty pockets while in her dreams the adults in the room have to ante up, and what she means by “investing in the middle class” is anyone’s guess, but she had more:
All of a sudden, there’s nothing left. All of a sudden the wealthiest nation in the world, we’re just totally scarce. We have complete scarcity when it comes to the things that are the most important.
She might want to visit socialist Venezuela for a look at “complete scarcity” of things that are most important, such as food.
Ocasio-Cortez continued, “And so for me, I think it belies a lack of moral priority and it’s unfortunate.”
As opposed to making others pay for your dreams, which used to be called stealing.
Ocasio-Cortez then rambled on:
I think that — but I also think a lot of these folks, especially those perhaps on the Democratic side, perhaps they don’t even see it, you know? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s a generous interpretation or not, but I legitimately think that they start kind of buying into conservative talking points. They get dragged into their court all the time. And I think it is because there’s this really myopic, and also, just misunderstanding of politics as this flat 2-dimensional left/right thing. And so they always feel like, “Okay, the Right says this thing. We have to respond to it.” And that’s why they’re winning. That’s why they’ve won for the last ten years, because they’ve dragged us onto their court. And we refuse to have our own strong message to force them to play defense on.
In all that verbiage, did you see an answer as to how the young socialist would pay for her dreams?
Didn’t think so.
Video below: