Bernie Sanders is betting that Democratic primary voters care more about bold programs than they do about the price tag.
In a presidential debate here Saturday night, Sanders scrapped with Hillary Clinton, who sought to come off as the pragmatic one who would never hike taxes on the middle class. Sanders, under pressure Saturday night and on Sunday morning talk shows, said his only middle class tax increase amounts to $1.61 per week for paid family leave.
But Sanders did not get specific on funding for his Medicare-for-all health care plan. He said the debate should not be about how much the government will pay, but how much consumers will save on balance.
It goes to the heart of the party’s conflict heading into 2016.
Clinton, the former secretary of state, is the battle-tested political veteran who served as first lady and ran for president in 2008. Sanders, the Vermont U.S. senator who describes himself as a “democratic socialist,” has long been one of the most liberal members of Congress as an Independent.
Calling for a "political revolution," Sanders has stormed the country drawing big crowds and compiling a big Christmas list. In addition to single-payer health care, Sanders wants free public college tuition, increased Social Security benefits and $1 trillion in new spending on roads and bridges.
Clinton, appearing to cite a recent Wall Street Journal story, pegged the total cost of Sanders' ideas at $18 trilllion to $20 trillion.
“I think we’ve got to be really thoughtful about how we’re going to afford what we proposed, which is why everything that I have proposed I will tell you exactly how I’m going to pay for it,” Clinton said.
Sanders shot back: “Secretary Clinton is wrong. …
“And it is unfair simply to say how much more the program will cost without making sure that people know that we are doing away with cost of private insurance, and that the middle class will be paying substantially less for health care on the single payer than on the Secretary Clinton proposal.”
Pressed again in Sunday appearances on NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s This Week, Sanders laid out his pay-for pledges: A Wall Street speculation tax for free college tuition, closed corporate tax “loopholes” for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, an increase in the payroll tax cap so it hits income above $118,500 for extra Social Security benefits.
Sanders insisted his only middle class tax hike would be the small levy for family medical leave, though his Social Security plan would add taxes for incomes below Clinton's middle class cutoff of $250,000. In making the same pledge Barack Obama made in 2008 — and broke in some of the Obamacare levies — Clinton's team believes it is on firm political ground.
“She’s out there talking to middle class Americans, working people, and she’s making the promise to them that when she’s in office, she’s going to work to raise their incomes but not their taxes,” said Clinton campaign chief John Podesta in the post-debate “spin room.”
But the Sanders campaign sees fertile ground to Clinton’s left.
“Democratic base voters … want a candidate who’s going to put forward bold solutions,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said after the debate.
“I think people who vote in those primaries believe, as Bernie Sanders does, that if you have a a government not controlled by powerful corporate interests, that that government can be a force for good in people’s lives. And I think they’re responding to him. I think his message on this issue is much more powerful than hers.”
Sanders cast himself in the tradition of Democratic presidents with big proposals funded by broad-based taxes: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Social Security, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Medicare.
But Clinton shows no signs of being pulled to the left by such big dreams.
She flatly asserted during Saturday’s debate that “I don’t believe in free tuition for everybody,” instead focusing on helping middle and lower income families pay for college. She pledged to fix “glitches” in Obamacare with a $5,000 prescription drug tax credit, among other ideas, but not go single-payer. She agrees with Sanders on paid family leave, but wants to pay for it with a targeted tax on the wealthy.
Though Sanders leads in New Hampshire, where he has long represented a neighboring state, he trails nationally and in other key states. Clinton's "Southern firewall" in Georgia and elsewhere still holds, leaving Sanders — and the badly trailing former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — as underdogs.
“I don’t think it changes the trajectory of the race,” former Democratic National Committee official Mo Elleithee, who is not aligned with a candidate, said after the debate.
“I think it’s close in New Hampshire between Bernie and Hillary, but Bernie and O’Malley are — the clock is ticking and they’re running out of opportunities to sort of have that breakthrough moment.”
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