Awkward:
Colbert Corners Warren on Middle Tax Class Increases, Calls Her Out When She
Dodges
On
Stephen Colbert's CBS late night show, the host challenged Elizabeth
Warren on the issue of single-payer healthcare, which she unequivocally
supports. He attempted to nail the leftist Senator down on the question
of whether or not middle class Americans' taxes would have to go up (they
would, a lot) in order to fund the program she and Bernie Sanders
have proposed. She ducked, he drilled down further, then she ducked again
-- prompting the comedian to call her
out on it, seemingly to her surprise:
“But will their taxes go up?” Colbert
pressed.
“Here’s the thing,” Warren began, but Colbert cut her off again.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’ve listened to these answers a few times before, and I just want to make a parallel suggestion to you that you might defend the taxes, perhaps, you’re not mentioning in your sentence.”
“Here’s the thing,” Warren began, but Colbert cut her off again.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’ve listened to these answers a few times before, and I just want to make a parallel suggestion to you that you might defend the taxes, perhaps, you’re not mentioning in your sentence.”
This is about as hostile as it gets for a Democrat on
national entertainment television, and Colbert immediately pivoted to offering
Warren advice on how to make the argument in favor of middle class tax hikes
for the greater good of single-payer healthcare. His critique, you see,
came from a place of support and
agreement; he simply wants her to be the most effective leftist she can
be. The political problem is that coming out and saying, "yes, we're
going to raise all of your taxes a lot, but it'll be worth it" is highly
politically risky. To wit:
If [voters] were told that a government-run system could lead to delays in
getting care or higher taxes, support plunged to 26 percent and 37 percent,
respectively. “The issue that will really be
fundamental would be the tax issue,” said Robert Blendon, a professor at the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who reviewed the poll. He pointed out
that state single-payer efforts in Vermont and
Colorado failed because of concerns about the tax increases needed
to put them in place.
The other fundamental
problem for Warren is that her plan would rip away private
healthcare plans from nearly 180 million Americans, making such coverage
illegal. At the last Democratic debate, Warren tried to brush this off by
claiming that few Americans love their insurance companies. What many, many
Americans do value quite strongly, however, is the coverage and providers they
come to rely on. Polling underscores
that reality, which is a massive political liability for
single-payer advocates, who explicitly want to permanently uproot tens upon
tens of millions of people from those existing arrangements:
According
to Gallup polling from late last year, 82% of Democrats said the quality of
health care they received was either good or excellent. A large majority, 71%,
believed their health care coverage was either good or excellent. Even
when it comes to health care costs, 61% of Democrats said were satisfied with
what they paid in health care. The same poll also notes that the vast majority
of all Americans are satisfied with the quality of their health care – rating
it ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ (80 percent) –
and their level of coverage (69 percent).
In addition, a recent Kaiser poll recently found that 86
percent of Americans with private coverage were satisfied with
it. Healthcare disruption is deeply unpopular, as both parties have
learned in recent years. Warren may try to "here's the thing"
her way out of addressing these facts, but she can't deflect away from much
higher taxes, illegal private coverage, and long,
bureaucratic wait times for care. I'll leave you with
this:
Recommended
Derek Hunter
By my count, this raises Sanders' proposal
costs to between $62 trillion and $85 trillion over the decade. Adding in the
$15 trillion baseline deficit, and we're looking at a budget hole of perhaps
$100 trillion (40% of GDP). No taxes are closing that gap. #Fantasyland twitter.com/sahilkapur/sta…
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