Democrats’ Pie-in-the-Sky Proposals

Vice President Joe Biden, April 7, 2015. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development.

Originally posted May 1, 2019.

As Democrat presidential candidates vie for voters’ attention, they are suggesting a potpourri of giveaways, including Medicare-for-All and greater Social Security benefits.

How to pay for these proposals? Finance new taxes. But, warns the WSJ, there are certain lessons not to be forgotten:

• The Medicare Hospital Trust Fund is expected to go broke by 2026.
• Recall how Democrats passed a 3.8-percentage-point tax surcharge on high earners’ investment income as part of ObamaCare supposedly to finance Medicare.
• Barack Obama then proclaimed “we’re going to be able to help ensure Medicare’s solvency for an additional decade” and “reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars.”
• The additional revenues have instead fed ObamaCare’s middle-class entitlement.

Read more here.