Usually some Fox or Newsmax "reporter" is the recipient of a mega-ton Psaki-bomb, but on Friday the deserving target was none other than Sen. Lindsey Graham (Invertebrates-SC).

The punishment was prompted by a reporter, though, who asked Jen Psaki about Graham's fabricated CBO score, based upon an imaginary future wherein the Child Tax Credits were extended indefinitely. As if that would be a bad thing. The reporter said Graham's monetary predictions were based on "a modified version of the CBO score for Build Back Better, and in their version it included extensions of programs without being paid for, which we understand is not what the president put forward in his legislation."

Exactly.

Pres. Joe Biden plans to PAY for things, unlike Republican legislators and executives. The reporter continued, though, quoting Graham as saying, "'If you believe these programs are going to go away after one or two years, you shouldn't have a driver's license. We all know Child Tax Credits are not going to go away after a year.'" Then she asked Psaki, "What does the White House say to that?"

As you might surmise, Psaki had quite a bit to say.

"Well, to quote, of all people, Norm Ornstein, at the American Enterprise Institute, who put this quite well, 'You can't assume programs will be extended just because Lindsey Graham wants to assure that. An estimate based on what's not in the bill is bogus and fundamentally dishonest.'"

Naturally, Psaki wasn't done.

"I mean, this is not a CBO score. This is a fake CBO score. It's not about the existing bill anybody is debating or voting on. This is about proposing the extension of programs that have not been agreed to, without the commitment of the president, which he's made repeatedly publicly, that he would never support extending these programs if they weren't paid for. Period. That has been his commitment, that is his commitment," she emphasized.

Then she brought out that I-word again, though Graham is one of the few GOP members who might know what it means.

"I would also note that there's a particular irony, that, it shouldn't be lost on Senator Graham, maybe it is lost on Senator Graham, I don't know, that the plan they proposed, and passed into law in 2017, the 2017 tax cuts were two trillion dollars which were not paid for in any way, shape, or form. That didn't seem to upset them at all," she pointed out. "And I will say, and they can thank us in any way they would like for this, that our projections, and the projections of our economists predict, is that for our plan, as this plan continues, if this plan continues in the second decade, it would actually reduce the deficit by two trillion dollars, so we're actually covering their irresponsible tax cuts to corporations and high-wealth individuals. They're very welcome for that."

Again, I'd have used harsher words than "irony." "Hypocrisy," "sociopathy," "gluttony" are some of the milder ones that come to mind when I think of the GOP howling over the Democrats' social spending. And I get the sarcasm in Psaki's point about thanking us for cleaning up the economic mess left to us by those very same Republicans with their trillion-dollar tax cuts for corporations and billionaires.

At the same time, I'd be very careful telling the GOP that they can thank us any way they'd like. I mean, we tried to give them democracy on January 6th, and look how they thanked us then.