It is one thing to attempt to spend projected savings, those mythical future funds that could possibly present themselves should everything go exactly according to plan. Warren, however, has gone the extra mile and predicated her plan on savings that the best evidence suggests will never occur at all. She is not counting on spending reductions that might take place given optimistic assumptions. She’s counting on savings that simply won’t happen, and then raising only enough money to finance the impossibly low cost that remains.

Now, as I said, this is, relatively speaking, a minor element of her plan—just a trillion dollars or so. Yet this one aspect is illustrative of her entire approach. It’s fake savings and fake revenue all the way down.