The trouble with Bernie Sanders - The Boston Globe
The trouble with Bernie Sanders
June 25, 2018
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images/File
Bernie Sanders spoke to labor activists in February 2017.
WITH BRACING CLARITY, Bernie Sanders castigates the economic ills corroding our democracy. Income inequality. A massive wealth transfer spurred by tax cuts and economic change. Declining wages and enfeebled unions. A campaign finance system that empowers plutocracy.
His problem? The cure.
Some initiatives make sense. Massive infrastructure investments. Paycheck fairness for women. Empowering embattled unions. Reining in huge corporations and financial institutions. But his core proposals are dubious politics and worse policy — a reminder that Sanders is not a Democrat, but a self-described socialist addicted to top-down federal programs that are demonstrably unwise, unaffordable — and unachievable. As Sanders contemplates another presidential bid, Democrats should scrutinize the realities behind his rhetoric.
Take having the federal government guarantee every American a job at $15 an hour — plus health insurance and child care. In The Washington Post,
Robert Samuelson estimates that this would create roughly 15 million public-service jobs, five times the number of current federal employees. Experts put the estimated annual cost at $400 billion — though, as often, Sanders disdains such mundane details.
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Details matter. As Kevin Drum points out in Mother Jones, those making less than $15 an hour might well besiege the program, driving the number of participants nearer to 37 million. And what of those who are making a bit more, but don’t like the job they have? Or part-time workers? Where does Sanders draw the line?
He doesn’t. Nor does he deal with other glaring problems: a mismatch between jobs and worker skills. An inability to discipline or fire recalcitrant employees. The obvious incapacity of the federal government to supervise such massive job creation. As Samuelson notes: “By assigning government tasks likely to fail, the advocates of activist government bring government into disrepute.”
That’s Bernie. Which brings us to another Sanders staple:
single-payer health care.
True, it would simplify health care for many Americans. But, once more, Sanders avoids dealing with the stupefying cost, set by the nonpartisan Urban Institute at $32 trillion over a decade — requiring an enormous tax hike, which Sanders demurely fudges.
Writing in the Post,
Catherine Rampell notes other complications. The 170 million people who like their current employer-sponsored health insurance. The prospect of hospitals bankrupted because Medicare reimburses at lower rates. Or, one might add, the health care rationing that, inevitably, would be the only alternative to ever-spiraling taxes.
Further, Sanders blithely proposes free tuition at our public universities. Surely we must make college affordable for those in need, lest we squander our young people and further our class divide. But why should America’s taxpayers subsidize the children of affluent Americans?
They shouldn’t — and they can’t. The estimated cost is $75 billion a year, which Sanders would cover by taxing Wall Street. But is Wall Street paying for the rest of this as well? In truth, Sanders is a political tooth fairy, disdaining the hard work of providing real solutions that can actually become law. As
Michael Arcenaux commented in The Root: “If hubris and the successful pursuit of headlines were genuine indicators of political aptitude, perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . would actually be the Svengali he’s presently being sold as.”
That’s why he has sharp skeptics on the nonhallucinatory left — exemplified by Drum, Rampell, Arcenaux, and Ezra Klein, who wrote that Sanders’ health plan “solves precisely none of the problems that have foiled every other single-payer plan in American history.” That’s why California legislators, a Democratic supermajority in America’s wealthiest and most liberal state, killed a single-payer legislation: No one could find a plausible funding source.
Instead of reality, Sanders has long promised to lead a “political revolution” – a tacit acknowledgment that his agenda can never be enacted as matters stand. In 2016, the seasoned analyst
Norm Ornstein responded:
“Going over the heads of Congress . . . has almost never worked. . . . With most congressional districts resembling homogenous echo chambers, national public opinion has limited bearing on congressional leaders. Talk radio, cable news, social media and blogs mean more. And none of these outlets would be swayed or intimidated to create some huge populist uprising that would force Congress to pass a sweeping populist agenda. The more Sanders pushed, the more there would be a sharp and vicious counter-reaction which would further tribalize the country.”
Most Americans aren’t socialists; Sanders enthusiasts can vote but once. That, not some establishment conspiracy, is why Hillary Clinton beat Sanders by 3.7 million votes. To resolve our problems, Democrats must craft a progressive agenda which can win elections, then pass Congress, here on planet Earth.
Richard North Patterson’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @RicPatterson.
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