As the Clinton camp furiously tries to ward off Bernie Sanders in Iowa, it is pushing this message: Sanders is not the friend of the middle class, but its foe.
Hillary Clinton has struggled more to gain working and middle-class voters compared with her Democratic presidential opponent, but she’s finding that she can ding Sanders the hardest when it comes to policy proposals.
That’s because Sanders, a socialist, proposes big-government ideas that would bring lots of benefits to Americans but carry a large price tag — too large to be covered just by the wealthy. And Clinton, who has largely adhered to Obama-esque promises not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000, is all too happy to point that out.
The latest battle is playing out over Sanders’ single-payer healthcare plan. He had promised to release payment details before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses but now may be backtracking on that vow, prompting sharp criticisms from Clintonland on Wednesday.
“One can only draw the conclusion the Sanders campaign did not want to outline what would amount to an across-the-board tax hike on working families,” Clinton senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Sanders’ 2013 health reform bill, which would set up everyone with a government-run health plan, proposes a 2.2 percent tax on earners and 6.7 percent tax on employers. Clinton contends that would amount to a 9 percent tax increase on middle-class Americans, assuming employers pass on the full amount to workers.
Sanders told CNN earlier this month that he would release details on his current healthcare proposal, but his campaign left it out of a set of other policies proposals it released Wednesday dealing with infrastructure and education.
“This is a major detail for Sen. Sanders to withhold, and I think it’s not becoming and it’s not worthy of the caucus-goers in Iowa,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said.
In contrast to Sanders, who also has proposed a payroll tax to fund three months of mandatory paid family leave, Clinton proposes benefits for Americans that are more modest, but also cost less.
Instead of overhauling the U.S. healthcare system once again, she wants to modify the Affordable Care Act. Under Obamacare millions of Americans still lack basic coverage, while Sanders’ plan would extend essentially free health coverage to everyone. The irony is that Sanders’ plan requires many people to help pay for it through taxes.
“Obamacare goes a lot of the way toward expanding coverage and some of the way toward trying to control healthcare costs,” said Jonathan Gruber, a former economist for the Obama administration and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Single payer would go more of the way, but it would cost money to do so, and so much you can’t just pay off the rich,” Gruber said. “It’s just a tradeoff people should understand.”
At the same time, Clinton is ignoring the fact that while Americans might pay higher taxes under Sanders’ plan, they also would have reduced costs for expenses such as health premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
Voters seem at least subconsciously aware of the ramifications of Clinton versus Sanders. She beats him 54 percent to 41 percent among likely Iowa voters earning more than $100,000, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. But those percentages flip among voters earning less than $50,000, with Clinton getting just 41 percent to Sanders’ 52 percent support.
Clinton has backed two health proposals in her past. The first was her “Hillarycare” plan in 1993 during her husband’s presidency, and then a less-detailed proposal during her first presidential bid. In both cases, she was careful to exclude any direct new taxes on middle-class Americans.
To pay for her 2008 plan, Clinton said she would cover more than half the cost simply by cutting wasteful spending and modernizing systems. She also proposed limiting the employer tax exclusion for high-end healthcare plans, but only those belonging to earners of more than $250,000.
The 1993 plan championed by Clinton and her husband mostly relied on Medicare and Medicaid cuts, with a cigarette tax, to help fund new benefits. There was no across-the-board increase in payroll taxes, unlike the plans Sanders has backed.
Bob Moffit, a senior healthcare fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who was heavily involved in lobbying against the Clinton plan, says he recalls opposition from Democrats, who said the Clintons’ financing mechanisms would fall short.
“I remember this in 1993 — when the president said he was going to finance the reform proposal without any broad-based new taxes, when he said that, he ran into a firestorm of opposition,” Moffit said.
