Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the excellent long term editor of The Nation, and a supporter of Bernie Sanders, wrote a nice piece in the WaPo the other day praising the budget from the Congressional Progressive Caucus headed by the estimable Rep. Raul Grijalva from AZ, who also endorses Bernie Sanders.
In the op-ed, VanDen Heuvel says
as the CPC budget demonstrates, there is growing political support at all levels for bold ideas that challenge the failed conservative consensus of the previous decades. And those ideas, like Sanders’s, are quite sensible.
Sounds great! She has a nice image of Bernie at the stump above the piece. Looks like Bernie has led the way to get the CPC to put forward a proposal that mirrors his boldness!
Except, when you look closer, there are a number of details that VanDen Heuvel leaves out however, which undermine her statement. In fact, this bold, practical budget is much closer in numbers and philosopy to Hillary Clinton’s than to Bernie Sanders. I went and looked at the actual documents on the progressive caucus web page, and here are a few things I found:
- Unlike Sanders, the CPC plan wants to build on the ACA (including a line item for a public option) without crossing over to single payer. That of course is where Hillary is sitting.
- Because there is no crossover to single payer, there is no call for an increased (and regressive) payroll/employer tax as there is in Bernie’s plan. Hillary also has no increased payroll tax.
- If you add up the income tax revenue increases over 10 years under the CPC plan you get $1.4 trillion, slightly more than Hillary’s, which you can read about at Vox.com giving about $1.1 trillion. The combined payroll/employer and income tax increases in Bernie’s plan add up to $15 trillion in new revenues over 10 years, an order of magnitude more. I understand the argument from Bernie and supporters (Look at what that pays for!) but the question here that the CPC and Hillary recognize is “How do you sell $15 trillion in new taxes that hit everyone?”
- The plan aims for debt free college education through subsidies and a reimagination of how college loans are offered/structured. That is what Hillary is proposing, not tuition free education like Bernie. Bernie’s plan by his own web site is $75 billion per year, to be paid for by transaction tax on wall street trading. The cost from the CPC is more like $66B over 10 years. I note that Hillary estimates her debt free plan will come in at $30B per year which is higher than the CPC.
- The CPC plan calls for progressive income tax increases on incomes above $250K but keeping GW Bush tax levels in place under $250K. That is similar to what Hillary proposes.
- The CPC proposes a tax on high speed trading, which Hillary also proposes.
I have not looked at everything, but when I look at these critical comparison points, I wonder how it is that VanDen Heuvel implicitly gives more credit to Bernie than to Hillary, when this is clearly so much more in line with her proposal?