Bernie Sanders doesn’t have specific costs for his expansive proposals, but his supporters don’t seem to care.
He was grilled on the intimidating costs of “Medicare for All” during Tuesday’s Democratic primary debate, and once again, Sanders avoided directly answering the question. Instead, he claimed that though general costs would go up, other subsidiary expenses that insurers currently charge would disappear under a single-payer system.
Specific numbers aren’t necessary right now, Sanders has argued, because negotiations have not yet begun. “You’re asking me to come up with an exact detailed plan of how every American — how much you’re going to pay more in taxes, how much I’m going to pay. I don’t think I have to do that right now,” he said in October.
Sanders can get away with this because he won’t face any backlash among his base. Indeed, most Bernie supporters care more about Sanders’s commitment to change than about how he’ll see it through. Sen. Elizabeth Warren saw her campaign suffer as she came under intense scrutiny for the cost of her plans, forcing her to reduce estimates. Sanders, by virtue of the fact that he’s treated as some sort of lovable socialist, has escaped similar criticism.
But now that Sanders has emerged as a serious contender, he owes it to general election voters to address the cost problem. And it is indeed a problem. Independent analysis from the liberal Urban Institute has pegged the cost of his healthcare proposal alone at $34 trillion over the next decade. Add to that the Green New Deal and Sanders’s student loan debt cancellation program, and government spending on these new proposals would hit more than $60 trillion. These three policies would cost more than the entire current federal budget, which is at almost exactly $52 trillion.
Under a Sanders administration, government spending would skyrocket, and the size of the government in general would more than double as the nation already enters an era of unprecedented debt. Taxpayers deserve to know how this will affect them. Sanders should take their questions seriously.
