Liberals call out Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Medicare-for-all plan
Even Democrats are taking notice of the estimated price tag. Dr. Vin Gupta weighs in.
Elizabeth Warren's war on Wall Street has some 2020 Senate candidates in her own party caught in the crossfire, according to a new report.
According to CNBC, some "finance executives" have told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer they are -- for the moment -- refusing to fork over big bucks to back candidates running for the Senate next year due to "their concerns with Warren becoming a front-runner in the race for the party’s presidential nomination".
The report, which cited "people familiar with the conversations," described the approach as an attempt to pressure Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Senate Democrats to "distance themselves from Warren’s economic populism."
“They feel, rightly or wrongly, attacked. Not just that there will be higher taxes, but that she is running her entire campaign as them being boogeymen,” a political advisor familiar with the conversations said, according to CNBC.
WARREN UNDER FIRE ON 'MEDICARE-FOR-ALL' AS SHE NOW CLAIMS BILLIONAIRES ALONE CAN FUND IT
“They don’t feel safe going to Trump, they feel disillusioned by Biden and they see this as a tactic to slow her down. They see it as a way to put pressure on the party as a whole to move away from Warren.”
CNBC's report went on to claim that many of those same financial figures are concerned Warren, D-Mass., could be damaging to their businesses if she were to win the White House next year.
The report comes amid concerns over Warren's various tax schemes, including those to fund her newly released "Medicare-for-all" plan.
As Fox News first reported, Warren on Friday outlined a plan costing $52 trillion over the next decade, including $20 trillion in new spending -- covered largely by an array of taxes on corporations, financial transactions, the wealthy and employers in general. While insisting the middle class would be spared, Warren went a step further in Dubuque, Iowa, over the weekend when pressed by reporters and claimed only billionaires would pay more.
“It doesn’t raise taxes on anybody but billionaires,” Warren said. “And you know what, the billionaires can afford it, and I don’t call them middle class.”
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“Understand this. This is no increase in taxes for anyone except billionaires,” she said. “Period. Done.”
Her campaign later walked back the remark, as critics on both sides of the aisle accuse her of relying on fantasy math to fund her plan.
Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement: "Her plan would create a new tax on employers of almost $9 trillion that would come out of workers' pockets, a new financial transaction tax that would impact investments held by middle-class Americans, and a new capital gains tax that would affect far more people than she stated tonight."
The Warren campaign’s detailed Medicare-for-all plan includes what is essentially a nearly $9 trillion payroll tax increase on employers—something economists generally say can hit workers in the form of reduced wages. Biden's campaign argues this would certainly hit the middle class.
Warren’s proposal, as she referenced in Iowa, indeed calls for a tax increase explicitly on billionaires, expanding a previously announced wealth tax to hit them harder.
FUNDING MEDICARE-FOR-ALL WITH TAXES ONLY ON RICH IS 'IMPOSSIBLE,' STUDY SAYS
However, the plan also calls for raising capital gains taxes for the "top 1 percent."
A recent study released by the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget declared it would be "impossible" to finance any such plan using only taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
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And The Wall Street Journal editorial board challenged other calculations, especially her claim that the plan would translate to $20 trillion in additional spending, whereas other estimates for Medicare-for-all have put the cost roughly $10 trillion higher.
“That leaves $30 trillion to finance, but Senator Warren waves her wand and says the bill will really be $20.5 trillion. She makes the rest vanish by positing magical savings from things like ‘comprehensive payment reform,’” the Journal wrote.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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