A Purity Test for Raising Middle-Class Taxes Would Eliminate Every Democratic Frontrunner
Aída Chávez
The Intercept
December 19 2019, 12:18 p.m.
In most Democratic presidential debates, moderators, along with most of the candidates on the stage, borrow from the GOP playbook to ask the 2020 contenders supportive of Medicare for All whether it would raise taxes on the middle class. On stage, only Sen. Bernie Sanders, who “wrote the damn bill,” would allow that his plan would do so, while noting that costs overall would go down. As Sanders often explains, “the wealthy will obviously pay the lion’s share of those taxes.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, refused to concede to moderators that Medicare for All would mean a tax hike for the middle class, insisting on pivoting directly to the question of overall costs. Warren, her campaign believed, would be handing Republicans a readymade attack ad if she publicly called for a tax increase on the middle class. But as her coy answer eventually became untenable, Warren released a plan in November detailing how she would fund Medicare for All without raising taxes on the middle class “by one penny.” She said she would finance single-payer health care with new taxes on financial firms, corporations, and the top 1 percent, among other mechanisms. To avoid raising middle-class taxes, she boosted her own wealth tax on the ultrarich.
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who flipped on Medicare for All and now attacks it, has also objected to tax increases to pay for health care. “Everything that we have proposed has been paid for, and we have proposed no tax increase on the middle class,” Buttigieg told ABC host George Stephanopoulos.
“We don’t have to do it in order to deliver these health care solutions,” Buttigieg said. “There is a lot of money on the table from loopholes in the corporate tax system from the wealthiest among us who could and should pay more.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar also made a big deal of Warren’s tax stance on the debate stage. “At least Bernie is being honest here and saying how he’s going to pay for this and that taxes are going to go up,” Klobuchar said at the October debate, suggesting that her own plan wouldn’t do so.
Despite their opposition to raising middle-class taxes to pay for health care, nearly every candidate taking the debate stage Thursday night supports legislation that would raise taxes on the middle class.
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