Vermont Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders has a new solution for every problem; trouble is, he's quick on the solution side but not too quick on the details side, and certainly not too quick to say how he wants to pay for free college, or free healthcare. Today's big plan is to eliminate everyone's medical debt.That's approximately $81 billion in debt that Sanders wants the Federal government to take over and pass the cost onto taxpayers. Newell talks to CBS Correspondent Steve Dorsey about how this plan is supposed to work.
"Part of how he'll fund this," Dorsey began, "Is with this proposal to tax extreme wealth,' and under his plan, it would become a marginal income tax. Starting at $32 million dollars, folks who are worth that much or earn that much would face a 1% tax on anything above that, and it would increase to 2%, 3%, all the way up to 8% on net worth of $10 billion dollars. Under that plan, over the next ten years, the US would generate more than $4 trillion dollars in revenue for his policies.""So this is going to fund Medicare for All, elimination of medical debt, free college, I assume - what else?" Newell asked. "Universal child care, his affordable housing plan," Dorsey continued, "and he added that this has been vetted by economists, and that is already exists in most European countries.""One thing about folks that are very wealthy is that they are very nimble, and they can choose not to live in this country. They can associate their income with their status in any number of places, isn't that correct?" Newell asked next.
"Often times, the ultra wealthy have dual citizenship in Bermuda, or Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands, so tracking that down could be a significant burden for the Federal government in many senses," came the response.Newell later put it this way: "Bernie Sanders is going to protect you from yourself. In fact on his website he says he will fight to make sure nobody in America goes bankrupt because of medical debt. Now, he gives a lot of statistics about bankruptcies that are connected to medical issues, and yes, there may be a medical debt itemized in that bankruptcy, and they're throwing that into these numbers so they're kind of skewed in a number of ways. But he also wants to eliminate means-testing requirements to file for bankruptcy. What does that mean? The court takes into account your income, your expenses, and they try to decide if you have enough disposable income to repay your debts - and he wants to do away with that. You can run up credit cards, but if you also have that medical debt out there - do you think there's a strong connection between not paying your credit cards and not paying your medical debts?""What Sanders is saying is 'you can't manage yourself, so let the Federal government do it.' And all of us who are able to stay within our means and do the things our parents taught us in the management of money - that means that you will responsible for all of the others!"