Pro Tip for Charles Blahous: You Have Just Made One of the Misrepresentations That Makes Me Stop Reading...

For historical reasons, the U.S. political system focuses on (i) budget accounts for the federal government trust funds individually, (ii) accounts for the entire federal government budget--including the trust funds--but does not focus on (iii) the accounts for the non-trust-fund part of the federal budget considered as a whole. It may well be a mistake to do it this way: Daniel Patrick Moynihan thought it was. He tried to change it, and failed. And I think it is. But it is the way the U.S. political system conducts its technocratic budget conversation. And people who want to participate in that conversation recognize this.

The fact that the U.S. political system does it this way means that complaints--like Charles Blahous's--by either Democrats or Republicans that somebody is doing something wrong because their policies have effects on both (a) and (b)--i.e. both extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund and affect the unified budget--cause me to stop reading immediately.

That's a litmus test for partisan hackery.

Note the "in effect" weasel words:

Charles Blahous: Obamacare's Financial Unraveling: Predictable, and Predicted:

Even before the president signed the ACA into law, non-partisan analysts demonstrated that the belief it would reduce federal deficits was based on a misunderstanding of government accounting. The ACA's projected savings from Medicare payment reductions were in effect being doubly committed: once to extend Medicare solvency and a second time to fund a massive coverage expansion…

Charles: We'd like to include you in the technocratic conversation about health care we are going to have over the next two decades. But--and here is the protip--this is not the way to join it.

You can come in from the outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, whenever you want.