Report: Sanders's proposals would add trillions to the debt (Crosspost from GDP)

[stopbush]

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders's proposals would add $2 trillion to $15 trillion to the national debt, an analysis published Thursday found. The range is due to differing estimates about the cost of Sanders’s healthcare plan, and the figures include net interest, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) said in its report.

While Sanders “deserves a great deal of credit for proposing specific and serious offsets for his spending proposals,” his offsets “would fall significantly short of the costs,” CRFB said.

Sanders’s major spending proposals include single-payer healthcare, free college tuition at public colleges and paid family and medical leave. He would offset his initiatives through a number of tax changes.

The group found that Sanders major spending initiatives would cost from $17 trillion to $28 trillion, depending on health assumptions and without including net interest. However, his tax plan would only raise about $15.7 trillion. When including net interest, Sanders would cause debt to rise from 86 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2026 under current law to between 93 and 139 percent of GDP by 2026, CRFB said.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/275470-report-sanderss-proposals-would-add-trillions-to-the-debt

[Thinkingabout]

1. His offsets does not offset his spending. To offset the spending it will require lots of more taxes

from everyone, he has not been honest with his offsets, he knows his agenda will cost much more.

[stopbush]

2. Yup. I posted this yesterday at another online forum:

"...the biggest LIE in Sanders' plans is how little it will cost. At present - due to the ACA - an insurer must spend 80% of premiums paid on actual services or refund the difference to policy holders. That means a lot of money is being collected and spent. Sanders' is saying that he can cut the average family's premiums by 80-90% and the employer's contribution by 50% and still provide all the services offered and paid for today. How can that possibly be true? You would need to eliminate "waste" in the system to the extent that half of the current spending on medical services is unnecessary and wasteful. Does anyone believe that's the case?"

[Thinkingabout]

9. I can assure him Medicare for all is not the answer, they only pay 80% of

Approved procedures, if they do not approve then Medigap does not pick up any of the procedure. He is not on Medicare and does not know how Medicare works.

[benny05]

3. Most of the Folks on that Panel are FOB's or Reaganites

Doesn't fly with me.

If we go into a deep recession again, the debt is not the most important issue. It's jobs.

[stopbush]

4. You're posting in the Hillary group. Please leave.

The same article is posted in GD-P. Your comment should be there, not in the HRC group.

Please delete your comment and repost in GD-P.

[fleabiscuit]

6. Ya, because feelings are more important than research and math. eom

[stopbush]

7. You mean people like

Leon Panetta, Mata Macguiness, Erskine Bowles, Kent Conrad, Vic Fazio, James Jones, Lou Kerr, Bob Packwood, Alice Rivlin, John Spratt and a number of others who were major players in the Democratic Party for years?

Don't like the facts, toss in some Sanders-style bullshit.

[Iliyah]

5. And guess who will eventually pay for it?

The millennials. And guess who they will blame, the others.

[jmowreader]

8. I think it's worse than that

Any calculation of the true impact of Sanders' healthcare plan has to take two unknowns into account: the level of deferred healthcare in America (i other words, all the people with a tooth that's been giving them trouble or a lump in their breast that won't go away, that they can't afford to go get looked at but WILL go get looked at if there's no out-of-pocket expense) and the willingness of The Rich to get the shit taxed out of themselves. Same thing with his college plan, his family leave plan...

[taught_me_patience]

10. His insanely low payroll tax for his Medicare for all will fall short by 1T/year alone

because his "magic" savings will never materialize.

[stopbush]

12. Exactly, He's saying it will be 6.2%, but 18% is what would be needed to fund

his Medicare for All program.

He's also disingenuous when he says that 6.2% will be paid by the employer. What that really means is that employers will pass the cost along to their employees in the form of fewer hires, fewer raises, lower starting pay, fewer perqs (like paid vacation days) etc. And if the actual cost of 18% were enacted, who would be paying for that?

Here's another thing Sanders plan is ignorant of: currently, not every employee at a particular job opts for the employer-provided insurance. That means the employer isn't paying anything in healthcare premiums for those employees. Think McJobs, where the majority of employees don't have benefits and don't cost their employer anything. Now, that same employer is going to pay 6.2% of EVERY employee's salary into the government-run plan. And as I said, it could be more like 18%. How does that save the employer any money?

At my current job, we have 7 full-time staff. Only 3 of us are on the company-provided insurance. The others are on their spouse's plan. If Sanders' plan was enacted, my employer would now need to pay that increase for every employee.

Fuzzy math - it didn't work for the Rs, and it doesn't work for Sanders.

[stopbush]

11. BTW, the crosspost of this thread in GD-P

is garnering the usual shoot-the-messenger whining from the Bernistas.

So predictable. So unimpressive.