Progressives (Liberals)

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The $97.5 trillion price tag is made up mostly of the costs of Sanders’s three most ambitious proposals. Sanders concedes that his Medicare For All plan would increase federal spending by “somewhere between $30 and $40 trillion over a 10-year period.” He pledges to spend $16.3 trillion on his climate plan. And his proposal to guarantee all Americans a full-time government job paying $15 an hour, with full benefits, is estimated to cost $30.1 trillion. The final $11.1 trillion includes $3 trillion to forgive all student loans and guarantee free public-college tuition—plus $1.8 trillion to expand Social Security, $2.5 trillion on housing, $1.6 trillion on paid family leave, $1 trillion on infrastructure, $800 billion on general K-12 education spending, and an additional $400 billion on higher public school teacher salaries.

This unprecedented outlay would more than double the size of the federal government. Over the next decade, Washington is already projected to spend $60 trillion, and state and local governments will spend another $29.7 trillion from non-federal sources. Adding Sanders’s $97.5 trillion—and then subtracting the $3 trillion saved by state governments under Medicare For All—would raise the total cost of government to $184 trillion, or 70 percent of the projected GDP over ten years

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Sanders’s agenda is virtually impossible to pay for. Adding $97.5 trillion in new spending to an underlying $15.5 trillion projected budget deficit (under current policies) creates a ten-year budget gap of $113 trillion. Yet Sanders’s tax proposals would raise at most $23 trillion over the decade.

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Tax rates would soar. Sanders would raise the current 15.3 percent payroll tax to 27.2 percent due to an 11.5 percent Medicare For All payroll tax (with some exemptions), and a 0.4 percent payroll tax for paid family leave. (The full Social Security payroll tax would also be applied to wages exceeding $250,000.) Sanders proposes a top federal income-tax rate of 52 percent. Capital gains and dividends would be taxed as ordinary income, plus a 10 percent net investment-income surtax for the wealthy. The resulting 62 percent top tax bracket for investments would be so far beyond the revenue-maximizing rate that it would produce little actual revenue. Overall, upper-income taxpayers would face a marginal tax rate as high as 80 percent from their federal income, state income, and payroll taxes. They would also be assessed a 62 percent investment tax rate, an annual wealth tax of up to 8 percent, and a 77 percent estate tax.

Yet these $23 trillion in proposed taxes would still leave a staggering $90 trillion budget deficit, or 34 percent of GDP. Closing the rest of the gap—which comes to $66,000 per household annually—is basically impossible. Given that Sanders already maximizes taxes on the wealthy, that leaves the payroll tax or a value-added tax (VAT) to raise the rest. The CBO claims that each 1 percentage-point increase in the payroll tax raises $0.9 trillion over the decade, thus requiring an extra 100 percent rate on top of the 27.2 percent proposal. Alternatively, a European-style VAT would raise $0.4 trillion per percentage point, thus requiring an absurd 225 percent tax rate to close the remaining $90 trillion budget gap. Cutting defense spending to NATO’s European target of 2 percent of GDP would save just $3 trillion. Even seizing all $82 trillion in household financial assets would be insufficient.

Sanders claims that economic growth would produce enough revenue to offset much of these costs. [Where have we heard that before?] It’s more likely that exorbitant tax rates and the diversion of millions of private-sector workers into government “make-work” jobs would reduce investment, productivity, and growth. Yet even for the sake of argument, permanently doubling America’s trend economic growth rate from 2 percent to 4 percent would raise just under $6 trillion in new revenues over the decade—still leaving an $84 trillion budget gap.

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Medicare For All is a major driver of Sanders’s budget deficits. The proposal would essentially replace all health premiums and out-of-pocket expenses with a new “single-payer tax” and federal provision of health care. Despite their assertions that families would come out ahead—that their health taxes would be lower than past premiums and out-of-pocket costs—Medicare For All proponents have failed to design a tax that could replace the current $35 trillion spent by families, businesses, and state governments. Sanders’s Medicare For All legislation includes no tax mechanism, and his worksheet of tax options adds up to just $19 trillion. Fully funded Medicare For All legislation doesn’t exist.

A presidential candidate who wins the majority of votes doesn't necessarily win the election — just look at how 2016 turned out. Instead, candidates play the electoral college game, focusing heavily on so-called swing states with the goal of winning over state delegates, and ultimately, the presidency. But while the 2020 swing states will likely get a lot of attention, at the end of the day, candidates themselves are still the most important factor in a race, polling experts tell Bustle.

According to Politico, pollsters can mostly accurately predict which way voters in most states will lean during a presidential election because those patterns have been established over time. California, for example, virtually always votes for Democratic presidential candidates; South Carolina almost always favors Republicans. But in 2016, it wasn't so clear which presidential nominee had an edge over the other in 11 states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

At this stage, I expect the [2020] swing states to look a lot like 2016, with a little more purplish hue put on some southwestern states such as Arizona and Texas," Patrick Murray, the Polling Institute director at Monmouth University, tells Bustle. "That’s driven by college educated women in those states, along with Latino voters."

Because campaigns generally consider the vast majority of states and their corresponding Electoral College votes to be predetermined, organizers prioritize campaigning in places where the election seems like more of a toss-up. This is because, as Al Jazeera reports, 48 states and Washington D.C. have winner-takes-all Electoral College systems. That means the candidate that wins the most ballot box votes will scoop up all of the electoral votes in that state.

But, experts tell Bustle, just because a state is considered "swingy" during one election doesn't mean that will always remain the case. Voter demographics, gerrymandering, and voter enfranchisement can play a role, they explain — but so do candidates and the issues they champion.

Murray says that to what extent swing states change in 2020 "will depend on who the Democrats nominate, so we won’t have a good idea until about a year from now."

Jason Mollica, a lecturer at American University who says he was a producer on Fox News' 2004 election coverage, agrees. He tells Bustle that while politics has definitely become more divisive in the last couple of years, candidate messaging will still play a big role in how successful a campaign turns out to be.

"In many ways, it does depend on a candidate, and that's still rings true," Mollica says. "If a candidate on either side does not really excite someone, if ... you don't feel that there is a connection, you're not going to vote for them."

Experts who spoke to Bustle had many ideas about how new swing states might develop during the 2020 presidential election. They pointed to Arizona, Nevada, Virginia, and Michigan as examples of states that might become or remain newly "swingy" in the upcoming year. But all agreed that it was a bit too early to know for sure, and underscored that candidates and the issues they campaign on will likely have the greatest impact on those kinds of shifts.

That's what I'm looking at — just to hear what the candidates are talking about and seeing what message really resonates," says Spencer Kimball, director of Emerson Polling.

Kimball points to the recent string of abortion bans that have passed in states like Georgia and Alabama as an example of a galvanizing campaign issue. Topics like that, he says, can bring out new or unanticipated voter populations that can impact presidential elections. He says we saw this concept play out in 2016, when then-candidate Donald Trump did unexpectedly well in blue states in the northeast. At the time, the Trump campaign pushed "America first" policies, focusing on topics like immigration, border security, and rehabilitating the coal and gas industries.

Although Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ultimately won New England states, the race was closer than one might expect given how that region traditionally leans, Kimball says. This suggests that Trump not only attracted people who don't typically vote, but also changed the minds of those who traditionally vote for Democrats, he adds — and that could happen again in 2020.

Like Mollica and Murray, Kimball notes it's a bit too early to determine exactly which states will be toss-ups in 2020. Democratic candidates, he says, will campaign accordingly, by throwing out ideas and seeing what resonates where.

We need to campaign hard in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennslyvania.

So, can you respond to this piece that I put up the other day? No Sanders supporter has answered the practical questions raised here:

You claimed no one had seen the manuscript. I corrected you.

are crooked as a dogs hind leg.

In reference to the NYT article that everyone is discussing in Congress.

Quote:

In reference to the NYT article that everyone is discussing in Congress.

If you mean no one in congress has seen the manuscript, probably true. Though I don't think that's terribly important. It has no relevance to the veracity of the reporting or to the veracity of what look to be the contents of Bolton's book and it's claims.

The twin brother of a key administration impeachment witness against President Trump is in charge of the National Security Council’s process for reviewing publications by current and former NSC officials, according to a new report on Monday.

Well, on that I agree with Juan Cole. If Trump is removed, Pence is President. Bolton and Pence are more aligned on Iran and would be willing to go to all-out war with Iran. Next election, Bolton then could run for President.

Depending on how long the trial last, Biden might be out of the front runner for good. In that case, Bloomberg might get some of his voters after the Iowa and NH votes are in.

Why do people who say they're democrats prefer republicans?

revelette3 wrote:

We need to campaign hard in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennslyvania.

On what? Democrats have nothing to offer anyone but a weaker economy and higher taxes. They have no interest in creating jobs. Government dependence is what they offer. People with jobs do not want that.