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The problem with @MattBruenig and the other sound finance Marxists' arguments (also the reason they find allies in the mainstream camp) is that they don't consider chronic aggregate demand deficiencies to be a problem.
Bruenig doesn't really want to get into an academic debate (what he terms word-games) and instead says that for all practical purposes MMT is just a restatement of functional finance. Okay, but even functional finance has a lot to teach the sound finance Marxists & neoclassicals. 
Because the doctrine of sound finance, which Marxists have been wedded to since the publication of Keynes' General Theory, is also reliant on word games.
Inflation offsets, for instance, are not 'paying for' spending in the way that the doctrine of sound finance prescribes. Because offsetting inflation does not mean 'run a balanced budget' or PAYGO. It's perfectly possible that some spending is never paid for & inflation is stable
Why is this? Because capitalist economies without fiscal intervention suffer from chronic deficiencies in aggregate demand. This is due to uncertainty and saving and the core of Keynes' rejection of Say's Law. It's ironic that Say's Law's greatest defenders would be Marxists.
In fact, extremely basic Maths would show that permanent deficits are needed in a growing economy, for debt/GDP to stabilise.
So recognising that fiscal policy should control inflation does not mean that all spending should be paid for. In general it will not be.
What functional finance helps to is take the attention away from the deficit, which by itself communicates nothing, and focusses attention to issues of real importance - namely output, employment and inflation.
And a focus on sound finance leads to potentially dangerous misconceptions. Like if a government runs a surplus it has the capacity to expand its spending. Not necessarily, it's not the budget position that tells us that, it's real economic conditions (employment etc)
Or the idea (frequently espoused by sound finance Marxists) that redistribution is neutral in terms of output and inflation. This is highly unlikely considering the quantitative AND qualitative differences in consumption between income groups.
Then there's the age-old problem of mainstream economics that sound finance Marxists fall prey to: viewing a monetary redistribution as analogous to real redistribution.
The mainstream essentially assumes that in the long run there is no saving, preserving Say's Law and showing the need for a balanced budget. But to do this they rely on modelling the economy as a single, infinitely-lived representative agent (while failing to understand infinity)
But for those of us who want to conduct realistic analysis & confront real issues that affect real economic decision making such as fundamental uncertainty, we have to understand that saving is not just deferred spending. It is precautionary. There will be saving in the long run
Therefore demand deficiencies will be chronic, and a balanced budget will not be the stable position in the long run.
