Charlie, if you don't mind, I'd like to throw in one of my 'plain English' explanations. (I hope it's accurate!)
Volts is volts and amps is amps. The circuit supplies 120v, and the load current is 9 amps. The circuit doesn't care that, because of the reactive load, they don't peak at the same instant. The circuit voltage is still 120, and the conductors must still carry 9 amps; that's volt-amps.
A watt-hour meter, which is basically an electric motor whose speed depends on voltage and current, will spin faster when the voltage and current peak simultaneously than it will if the two are offset in time, even with the same voltage and current. It responds to watts.
Think of it like this: volt-amps aren't higher than watts because of poor power factor, watts are lower than volt-amps because of it. A watt-meter reads more and more inaccurately as power factor declines. Amperage is higher than a watt-meter indicates woth a poor PF.
Conductors have to be sized to carry both the usable current and the reactive current to deliver the former to the load. Power companies don't like low-PF customers because they have to build their systems to be capable of supplying both the usable and 'wasted' current.
A motor 'converts' watts, and not VA, into horse-power. If a motor has a poor PF, it causes more current to flow in its supply conductors than it is capable of turning into torque, so the conductors must be upsized for a given HP rating, and the POCO's charge more per measured watt/hr.
PF-improving measures don't eliminate reactive current, they merely localize the current to the conductors between the load and the PF-correcting device, and alleviate the rest of the supply system of the burden. That can end up costing less than the conductors would.
In up-sized-neutral MWB computer-circuits, the neutral 'shouldn't' be carrying any more current than the ungrounded circuit conductors, yet even with balanced loads, the neutral heats up more than the others do. That's current that is not being consumed by the loads.
If there's a low PF, the metered wattage would read to be a bit less than volts x amps, because the voltage and current don't peak at the same time, and the motor, i.e., the W/Hr meter, spins slower.
The point is that, when given the load's amp rating, the PF is not important. If it's given in VA, Kva, etc., then the PF matters for sizing the conductors, the service, etc. We have to pay to supply current we don't get any benefit from.
Gee, I hope this makes as much sense to you as I think it did to me. I'm open to criticism and corrections, as if I could stop you guys!