The supposedly simple and easy solution to the program’s shortfall that progressives are selling would be a record-setting tax increase and further warp the federal government’s fiscal priorities. I write in the Washington Post:
If the Sanders bill became law, progressives would have won their biggest victory on taxes ever — and done nothing to fund a Green New Deal, or early-childhood education, or tuition-free college, or infrastructure improvements. They would not even have advanced the Sanders dream of Medicare-for-all. Or, for that matter, done anything to address Medicare’s own projected shortfall. After raising taxes on the rich as high as plausible and arguably beyond, where do they think they would find the money for any of this?
P.S. Here’s longtime progressive columnist Michael Hiltzik using all of his analytical and rhetorical powers to dispute my column.