Bernie Sanders is pushing back against the suggestion that the middle class would get tax hikes with nothing to show for it if he were elected president.
The Vermont senator’s campaign issued a statement Friday night criticizing as “inaccurate and one-sided” the study published early in the day that found that his tax plan would raise taxes by $9,000 on average, with middle-class households bearing some of the burden.
The analysis was published by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank that has also come under fire from Republican candidates for reports that reflected poorly on their tax proposals.
“Sanders’ tax plan is the mechanism for achieving universal health care and education, creating jobs, and a secure retirement,” said campaign policy director Warren Gunnels in a statement sent out by the campaign. “Without estimating the benefits the American people would gain under these initiatives, the Tax Policy Center’s report is inaccurate and one-sided.”
The Tax Policy Center’s report only looked at the tax side of Sanders’ plans, and its authors said that they do not have the capability to model the spending side. They are, however, working on a macroeconomic model that would take some of those factors into account.
Sanders’ proposed middle-class tax hikes have been a dividing line in the Democratic primary. His opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has said that she will not impose tax increases on middle-class families.
The biggest disconnect is that Sanders’ plan would create a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer health care plan, which would necessitate higher taxes across the board but would, in his vision, eliminate individual premiums and employer health care costs.
Gunnels said that it was “misleading” for the group not to include those savings in its analysis, pointing to a separate analysis from the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice that found that Sanders’ plan would save money for most households, increasing take-home pay for middle-class families by $3,200.
Gunnels also noted that the Tax Policy Center’s analysis left out the gains to households that would come other programs Sanders would fund with his tax increases, including free college, greater government infrastructure spending, and expanded Social Security.
Sanders himself has acknowledged that his ambitious progressive plans entail tax hikes.
“We will raise taxes, yes, we will,” he said in a late January presidential town hall in Iowa, warning of the “disingenuity” of those criticizing his tax-raising plans without also mentioning his goal of eliminating health care costs in the private sector.
