(Akiit.com) Last week, Elizabeth Warren walked into an interview that was supposed to be easy: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The liberal talk show host made it clear long ago that he’s no supporter of President Trump. He spent most of the interview joking around with the Democratic presidential hopeful, asking softball questions.
But then he asked a serious question about the cost of her proposed “Medicare For All” scheme.
“How are you going to pay for it? Are you going to be raising middle-class taxes?” Colbert asked.
Now she could have done what a normal person would do: answer the question. But she’s not a normal person, she’s a politician. So she decided to dodge the question.
“So, here’s how we’re going to do this,” she started. “Costs are going to go up for the wealthiest Americans, for big corporations… and hard-working middle-class families are going to see their costs going down.”
Colbert kept pressing her on the issue to no success. She refused to answer the question.
This isn’t the first time Warren’s skirted the issue. During the ABC debate last week she dodged the same question, twice in a row.
This raises an important question: why can’t she answer such a simple question? If she really believes a government takeover of healthcare will cause overall costs to go down why doesn’t she just admit taxes would be raised?
The answer is obvious: she knows voters do not take kindly to tax increases. Bernie Sanders, the guy who “wrote the damn bill” isn’t so squeamish. He admitted in July that tax increases for Medicare-For-All could go as high as $10,000 per household.
Not just for the “millionaires and billionaires.” For middle-class families.
Warren has already come out in favor of taxes that hurt the middle class. Her carbon tax would drastically increase utility bills, making it harder for families to keep the lights on. Not to mention the massive price increase Americans will face at the pump.
And if you want to defend your family, Warren’s national gun tax of 30% will make it much harder. Many low-income families won’t be able to afford firearms at all, leaving them defenseless.
Even Vox, one of America’s most liberal publications, admits that progressive policies are impossible to fund without taxing the middle class. At a cost of over $32 trillion per decade, none of the current tax proposals levied by Warren would be enough to pay for it. According to the Tax Foundation, even raising the top marginal tax rate to 70% would only raise $700 billion in 10 years.
So Bernie is correct. Paying for Medicare-For-All means taxing the middle class more.
Warren talks about fighting back against “flat wages and exploding household costs.” First, this is completely false. Wages have been climbing under the Trump administration thanks to deregulation and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Imposing new taxes on middle class families will not reduce household costs. And raising taxes on the “millionaires and billionaires” certainly won’t raise wages.
Progressives proclaim their policies are by the people and for the people. But if they lie about the simplest facts why should we trust them on anything? Or give them the keys to the White House?
Grover Norquist said it best: “If Elizabeth Warren will not admit the obvious—that her wild spending will require broad-based tax hikes on the middle class—in a Democrat debate, will she ever tell the truth in a general election?”
Better yet, will she ever tell the truth at all?
Columnist; Emmanuel Sessegnon