Texas Republican Arithmetic
Texas Congressfool Pistol Pete Session (Rep, Coal Industry) stood on the House floor and did some arithmetic.
In damn public.
He announced to a stunned America that Obamacare costs $5 million per person. Then he showed his work.
“If you just do simple multiplication, 12 million into $108 billion, we’re talking literally every single recipient would be costing this government more than $5 million per person for their insurance,” said Sessions, chairman of the House Rules Committee.
Well, I guess we should be glad he’s not head of the arithmetic committee.
First, you divide, not multiply. Second, when you do divide, you get $9,000. That’s a tad short of $5 million.
Or, as the Dallas Morning News says —
Thanks to Kat for the heads up.
I’m just sorry it’s too early in the day to start drinking.
The GOPers really have no shame. None at all.
1Smart guy. Guess he doesn’t have staff to do this for him.
2Even the $9K figure is misleading. The ACA basically rolled up all federal spending on healthcare into one place. So that money includes Medicare funding, money to hospitals for under/uninsured patients, some research money, grants to states and whatnot, along with direct subsidies for individual health care insurance. Most of this is money that was already being spent, and in fact, the GAO estimates that total spending will decrease as the ACA fully kicks into gear and cost measures kick in.
3Thank you, Mark. You’re one of those rational, thinking people the GOP cannot stand! [smirk]
But, hey, why let the truth and basic math interfere with a really good lie, yes? This may be another pants-on-fire winner. Hey Ted Cruz, you’ve got some competition from Petey! Time to nutter it up a notch!
4Don’t you just love it when they try to sound logical…
5and fail miserably.
if a gop man does the math it ain’t rite
6Wow! Don’t I recall Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention yelling “arithmetic!!!”
But . . . seriously . . . (must not giggle!) Pete never claimed to be anyhow knowledgeable about math. He knows how many fingers and toes he has and thats about it. Lord knows how much of a sweat he breaks into when he has to count beyond 20!
7http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/0d/0dba2182baaf567abd272100817df53f3169d7449aa5d1a98235d2f885163a1e.jpg
8I ran the math backwards: for a $108 Billion total cost to work out to $5 million/person – the total population of the US would need to be 21,600 people.
Mr. Google shows the US population at 320 million. 21,600 people is 0.007% of the overall population.
The Republican definition of “people” is those in the top 0.01% of wage earners. By that definition, Mr. Session’s math is close: For a population of 32,000, Obamacare’s cost works out to $3.4 million per “person.” I guess Mr. Sessions feels that using the top 0.01% is too inclusive
As for the rest of us – well, we don’t really count as “people” to Republicans.
9Only off by $5 million on an estimate of $5 million! I’m impressed! The Republicans are getting much better at this.
I remember a time when Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld said the war in Iraq would never cost more than $1.9 billion, total. Where are we now, $3 trillion? What’s that come to per person?
10Sessions, Cronyn, Cruz, Gohmert, Perry, ‘Lil Bush, Abbott. Texas must have a special place to be able to churn out these whiz kids. Too bad you can’t site a fertilizer plant right next to the Texas Republican Politics Training Academy.
11Is it our wonderful, starved to death education system, or do you have to leave half of your brain at the door on election day to elect these nincompoops? WTF. This will probably be a lead story on Faux News….so we can spread our Texas ignorance far and wide. Talk about math anxiety.
12Math = science = not the bible
13My guess would be about $16,000, Rick. Hold on, Sessions is drunk dialing me. I was wrong, Rick. Sessions did the math and Iraq will only cost us about $1.92 each.
14Well, we know the GOP have nothing but contempt for science, and apparently their disgust with facts extends to mathematics as well.
The worst thing is that studies have shown that correcting this kind of frackwittery only drives the original mistake deeper into peoples’ minds, especially if they were inclined to believe it in the first place. So look for his stupid number to be quoted again and again on the right wing and probably on Fox.
15Correction. My estimate was based on my understanding that the Iraq War will cost us about $5 trillion, not $3 trillion.
16The sad part is no matter how wrong he is,this will be taken as gospel by wingnuts and you will never convince them he was wrong. Don’t expect a mea culpa from a wingnut either.
17“Pistol” must be one of those believers in”fuzzy math” one of Texas’ former governors once railed against.
18Republicans don’t do arithmetic. They do demagoguery.
19That’s true onion. Let’s forget math and go to common sense. The vast majority of Americans will never see five million in their lifetimes much less pay that in taxes. Yet, it won’t matter to low information voters.
20Perhaps it was a rounding error.
21Maybe Sessions has no one on staff who can add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Arithmetic and algebra come naturally to me, and I wouldn’t work for him.
22Shouldn’t these fools have someone (like maybe even capitol custodial staff) take a look at their speeches before they get to the House floor?
23As epo says, the rwnj’s don’t care about accuracy ’cause their base hasn’t a clue and doesn’t want one. I remember pleading with a colleague who was forwarding the worst teabagger emails, to check the facts before believing/forwarding them. He became furious with me for challenging his (political)beliefs and emailed the worst hate-filled rant I have ever received. So much for fact-checking.
24Listen, anybody can make a mistake and even one involving basic logic like this. To them this would be about like typing the wrong word in a forum posting like this one.
The thing with modern conservatives is that this will not be a significant mistake for them. OK so that argument didn’t go over so well for some reason but they still know in their gut of guts that Obamacare is an expensive disaster that is worse than slavery. Unlike the Iraq war which was a cost free blooming success story until Obama got involved.
This is what Republicans truly believe. It is an article of faith. Not math. Not science.
25It must be that damn Common Core math
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