I am so sick of hearing claims like, “this bill will save $200B by 2020â€.
What does that mean? It usually means that in order to trump up the savings benefit, the politician multiplied the annual savings by 10. Or they did inflation adjustment, or added debt interest, or other complex additives to make the savings look bigger than it is. At the end of the day, it is a bogus number.
I just received a letter From Senator Diane Feinstein claiming a bill will save “$176 billion from 2014 to 2023â€. What that really means is an annual savings of roughly ~$17.6B. That’s nice, but when put in perspective to the $3.6T spending package being proposed for 2011, it’s a mere half of one percent of spending. And she calls this reform.
It’s not just the democrats doing this – all of them seem to use this kind of lying mathematics in order to fool their constituents. It’s dishonest at worst and deceptive at best.