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View Full Version : Sander’s Great Society plan could add $15T to debt



Peter1469
04-08-2016, 04:24 PM
Sander’s Great Society plan could add $15T to debt (http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/04/08/Sanders-s-Great-Society-Plan-Could-Add-15-Trillion-Debt)

Sanders wants to greatly expand the role of government in our daily lives. He also wants to raise taxes- a lot. The estimates are that he would add $15T to the debt. But static accounting models don't really consider big changes in the economy from tax policy. So these numbers don't consider a contracting economy due to such a large increase in the tax burden.


Not since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson has any candidate for president wanted to do as much to expand the size and scope of the federal government as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the democratic socialist who has high ambitions to beat out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination this summer.

Johnson poured hundreds of billions of dollars into his “Great Society”– including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid – and Sanders’s revolutionary government and social welfare agenda could easily match or exceed that spending.


If Sanders had his way, the government would provide free college tuition to all students at state-run colleges and universities. Americans would be entitled to medical and family leave from work, courtesy of the federal government. Rather than trimming benefits of the Social Security system, as fiscal conservatives say would sustain the retirement program, Sanders would engineer an historic expansion of the program for retirees and the disabled.


That’s just for starters. Sanders’ most ambitious and costly proposal would enact a European-style single-payer national health insurance program to guarantee every American health care coverage. He would launch a major new infrastructure program to repair and replace the nation’s aging highways, bridges, airports and water projects. And he would provide universal childcare and pre-school programs.



To his credit, Sanders’s has proposed a series of massive income and payroll tax increases to help offset the cost of his ambitious program. That’s assuming, of course, that he could push trillions of dollars in tax hikes past congressional Republicans who wouldn’t even go along with a five-cent increase in the federal gasoline tax last year to help repair crumbling highways.

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