Bernie Sanders’ “Democrat socialist” policies sound good and have a lot of popular support among certain demographics, but when pressed on how he would pay for all the free stuff he’s promising, he’s a bit nonplussed. Pesky details like that just don’t interest him; it’s all about the utopian ideal in his dreamy little head, not about reality.
For example, although he pledged to release his plan for paying for his health care plan before the Iowa caucuses, he’s now decided that might be a mistake and is considering breaking that particular pledge.
Bernie Sanders could break his pledge to release details on how he would pay for his health care plan before the Iowa caucuses, according to a top aide.
His campaign released details Wednesday of how Sanders will pay his $1 trillion dollar infrastructure plan and his $75-billion-a-year plan to make public college and universities tuition-free. But noticeably absent was his plan to pay for Medicare for all, a price tag that some estimates put at $15 trillion.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, isn’t saying when those numbers will be released.
“I don’t have a date for that,” he said earlier this week. “Not necessarily before the caucuses.”
Weaver stood by his comments on Wednesday, stating that the campaign does not yet have a date for when to release the Medicare-for-all plan. He added that Sanders’ health care plan would be paid for “progressively,” similar to the way his previous Medicare-for-all proposals have been paid for.
CNN continues:
. . . . That’s a change from what Sanders first told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” earlier this month that he would release his details for paying for his health care plan before the caucuses on February 1. Bash pressed the Vermont senator again on Tuesday after President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union when she asked if Sanders would make good on his pledge to release his single payer plan.
Watch:
Sanders understands that his lofty promises will come at a huge cost to the very voters he is courting, so pushing off the release makes sense. On the other hand, though, the people who are enamored of Sanders’ proposed policies are not likely to think about—or care—how, or even if, such things are paid for.
CNN also notes that raising taxes on the middle classes to pay for his sweeping socialist plans would violate yet another of his pledges.
If Sanders’ health care plan did raise middle class taxes, the senator would violate another pledge he made in December when he told NBC that his paid family leave would be the only measure he would raise taxes on the middle class to fund.
It seems this primary season is like every other in the sense that it’s full of big promises, lofty and unrealistic proposals, and broken pledges aplenty.
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