Far be it for me to defend Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress, but I have to say that if someone put a gun to my head and told me to support newly-minted Congressmoron Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition to spending restraints proposed by the House Speaker and Pelosi’s “PAYGO” provision that requires that new spending be offset by matching cuts or increases in revenue, I’ll take the latter in a heartbeat. Because economics.

Thanks a pantsload, Occasional Cortex, for making me defend Pelosi (sort of)!

Progressives who support programs like “Medicare-for-all” and other policies likely to increase government expenditures worry that the rule would create a self-imposed obstacle with limited political upside — and come across as a sign that Democrats are committed to the austerity economics championed, at least rhetorically, by conservative groups.

Translation: progs worry that they won’t be able to spend money they don’t have on socialist programs that are bound to lead to a decline in quality health care, because they don’t want to resemble *GASP!* conservatives!

“I do not understand why the Democrats don’t have the courage of our convictions and make the case that our policies will lead to growth,” [California Rep. Ro] Khanna said, arguing that the rule was ultimately a self-defeating political calculation: “PAYGO is to protect members in vulnerable districts who can say that Democrats are for fiscal responsibility. I’m all for raising taxes on the 1% and multinational corporations and stopping our excessive spending on the bad wars. But we should make an economic growth argument in swing districts instead of thinking the ’90s playbook of fiscal responsibility will work.”

Well, Ro, you could have stopped at “I do not understand,” and we would have believed you. Let’s explain this sloooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwly, you dumb twatmold.

According to analysis by the Urban Institute – hardly a conservative institution – your little scheme would cost the country $32 TRILLION over 10 years. That’s TRILLION with a “T.” Care to guess how much federal expenditures roughly are – give or take? Roughly $4 trillion.

All for raising taxes on the 1 percent, are you, snowflake?

For simplicity’s sake let’s pretend that the 1 percent each make $40 billion per year – much like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made every year. In order to be in the top 1 percent of earners in the United States, you have to earn a mere $400,000 per year, and that’s a lot of people – approximately 1.5 million people. So if you assume that every last one of those 1.5 million people makes $40 billion per year, you have $30 trillion. That’s a big amount, and if you take half the salary for every one of those 1.5 million people, you will wind up with $30 trillion per year. More than enough to pay for your “Medicare for All scheme,” right?

Only one problem: most of these 1 percent don’t make nearly that much money. Bezos is the richest man in the world, so his $40 billion earnings last year are an outlier, not the norm. The average salary of the top 1 percent of earners in the United States is a little less than $1.5 million per year. So if you take away 50 percent of the salary of the average 1 percenter in the United States, you’ll gain $1.5 trillion per year – not even half of what is needed to fund this harebrained scheme.

What do you think is going to happen to productivity when more than half of that “rich” individual’s or company’s earnings are going to be appropriated by the government leeches? Why work hard and invest if more than half your return will simply be stolen? How many producers do you think would remain in the United States, knowing that their efforts would be rewarded by more theft and less earnings? What would that do to the economy?

And why would doctors bother working, paying astronomically high costs for everything from office overhead to malpractice insurance, when Medicare’s infamously low payments to providers would basically make them indigent after paying astronomically high student loans for med school off? Do you think young people would be encouraged to enter the field? Do you think current providers would be encouraged to work and study harder?

Ocasio-Cortez also said on Wednesday she would vote against the package when it comes up soon after she is sworn in on Thursday.

“PAYGO isn’t only bad economics,” she tweeted, “it’s also a dark political maneuver designed to hamstring progress on healthcare + other leg. We shouldn’t hinder ourselves from the start.”

Pardon me for being a cynic, but I’m pretty sure a person who claims that unemployment is low because people are working two jobs – a claim so ridiculous, that even PolitiFact slapped the princess stupid – wouldn’t know “bad economics” if it jumped up and embedded itself in her chafed labia like a tic.

And speaking of not knowing economics, Bernie Sanders jumped into the fray with the following “astute” observation.

On Wednesday afternoon, the dissenters got a boost from independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who made the case in a tweet.

“I’m concerned that the concept of PAYGO will make it harder for Congress to address the many crises facing our working families,” Sanders said.

Translation: I’m concerned that the concept of PAYGO will make it harder for idiot politicians who don’t know math or economics to spend money they don’t have while punishing the producers and employers of America, forcing them to relocate—or worse—stop operations, leaving employees without jobs, and reducing economic output.

Got it.

Thanks for confirming once again, proglodytes, that Hooked on Economics did not work for you.

Luckily, just as I was getting ready for a shower in boiling Listerine for having to defend Pelosi (sort of), my faith (or lack thereof) in the dumbassery of Captain Botox was restored.

Newly-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in an interview published on Thursday that the Constitution considers her equal to President Trump.

When Pelosi was asked whether she considers herself equal to Trump, she said, “The Constitution does,” The New York Times reported.

That sound you hear is me cracking my head against my desk repeatedly.

Featured photo courtesy of Elvert Barnes via Wikimedia Commons (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic; cropped)