Elizabeth Warren 2020 campaign megathread

[ProudModerate2]

We are wasting all this breath talking about something that is not going to happen.  Single payer exists as a purity test.  Warren's "funding mechanism" exists as a lever to help her pull support from Bernie.  None of this is real policy and none of it is ever actually going to happen.

 So why are you wasting so much time and energy posting in the Warren thread if you don't believe any of this can happen? That seems dumb.

What's so "dumb" about it?
It seems much of Warren's new M4A plan is being discussed here, so what's the problem?

 He's arguing there's no chance it passes and people are dumb for discussing it but he's discussing it. That seems weird to me.

He makes a lot of good points. And the full costs and how to pay for it, are not completely justified in her plan. It's a mega-huge new plan. The Senate will probably be held by the GOP, and even a small Dem majority in the Senate would have a problem passing this plan. So for someone to say it would probably not pass and become legislation, is within reason.

[Heebie Jeebie]

Josh Barro has what I think is one of the better takes on Warren's plan: "Three Takeaways From Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Pay for Single Payer."  http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2019/11/three-takeaways-from-warrens-medicare-for-all-payment-plan.html?__twitter_impression=true

He ends it like this:

Zooming out, Warren’s plan is a bet on a bold proposition: That a very large expansion of government benefits around health care can be financed without a middle-class tax increase. Importantly, what she is proposing is not nearly as large an expansion as Bernie Sanders has proposed, because her plan effectively does not eliminate employer-paid insurance premiums, the costs of which economists believe are ultimately borne by workers. But she is still proposing to finance about $8 trillion of new health-care spending through taxes on the wealthy and corporations over a decade, on top of the trillions more in spending on education and childcare she had already proposed to be financed with the first tranche of her wealth tax.

All that said, I continue to believe what I believed before this announcement: If elected president, Elizabeth Warren would not enact single payer. If she wins, she will either be working with a Republican-controlled Senate or a Senate with a narrow Democratic majority where she would depend on votes from senators like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. There are many components of this plan they are unlikely to ever sign up for, starting with the elimination of private insurance.

Warren’s plan does not get us closer to single payer because it does not fix the fundamental problem with single-payer plans in the American context. Our high costs make single payer more problematic to implement here than anywhere else, because our high prices mean greater financing needs than you’d have anywhere else. Warren’s ideas about cost control, many of which are worthy, would start putting a dent in that — and many of them could be implemented without broader changes to the system of health-care financing. That’s where I’d encourage the next president to start.

[American2020]

‘This is going to cause down-ballot damage’: Warren's $20 trillion health plan fails to quiet critics

The most-vulnerable Democrat in Colorado’s state House, Bri Buentello, is dreading door-knocking in her rural district now that Elizabeth Warren dropped her massive “Medicare for All” plan into the presidential arena.

“This is going to cause down-ballot damage in swing districts and states if she’s the nominee,” Buentello says, describing how her Pueblo-area constituents — who voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016 — were already echoing criticisms about a giant, one-size-fits-all big government run plan that cancels private health insurance and raises taxes.

The fear of blowback is indicative of the broad and largely negative response to Warren’s proposal from centrist, moderate and rural Democrats — many of whom, like Buentello, back Joe Biden in the primary. And it exposes the fault line between those who fret about winning voters in the center and the activist progressive base propelling Warren to the front of the Democratic pack.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/01/elizabeth-warren-health-plan-2020-064259


Elizabeth Warren will have to convice moderates and conservatives. She also talk to them.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I love the optics of Warren’s healthcare plan, but I’m still concerned with the thousands of corporate money she transferred from her Senate to Presidential campaign.

Yes, she used the "Elizabeth Warren Action Fund" to launder money (I think through the MA Democratic party) back to her campaign to get around the $2700 donation limit in her Senate race.  That fund has donations as high as $15.4k and totals almost $5m.

https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00631861&two_year_transaction_period=2018&cycle=2018&line_number=F3X-11AI&data_type=processed

[Beet]

I love the optics of Warren’s healthcare plan, but I’m still concerned with the thousands of corporate money she transferred from her Senate to Presidential campaign.

Yes, she used the "Elizabeth Warren Action Fund" to launder money (I think through the MA Democratic party) back to her campaign to get around the $2700 donation limit in her Senate race.  That fund has donations as high as $15.4k and totals almost $5m.

https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00631861&two_year_transaction_period=2018&cycle=2018&line_number=F3X-11AI&data_type=processed

This was a joint fundraising committee, where part of the money goes to the Party and part to the candidate. Sanders has done the same thing:

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has signed a joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee, the DNC confirmed to POLITICO.

The move, which comes more than two months after Hillary Clinton's campaign signed such an agreement in August, will allow Sanders' team to raise up to $33,400 for the committee as well as $2,700 for the campaign from individual donors at events.

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-2016-fundraising-dnc-215559

Re: Some of the pieces above.

I'm seeing a lot of criticism of Warren's plan that, while it may be fair, is essentially right-wing in nature, such as that (1) Imposing flat costs on corporations for their labor force will disincentivize hiring, or (2) raising taxes will go against the "race to the bottom" of different countries to become more corporate-friendly to multinationals, or (as in the NY Mag piece) that taxing billionaires' wealth at 6% will disincentivize people from creating billion-dollar businesses. Whether one agrees with these critiques or not, they're based in the same logic that the right-wing has been using for decades against progressive reforms, so people buying into them should be aware of that.

The Charles Blahous piece above is interesting- he accuses her of double counting on administrative expenses. It's true that there are two areas of her plan where reduced administrative expenses come into play. But one of them is insurers and the other is providers- not the same thing. He also hand-waves away a number of the components of her plan such as reducing tax evasion (even though her estimate is conservative in the amount that can be reduced). He argues that "if it could have been done it would have", ignoring that she has specific reforms in her plan to reduce tax evasion. He also lazily says she's committed her wealth tax to different priorities (linking to a webpage from June), but ignores her new proposed billionaires' tax. All together it doesn't seem like an objective analysis, which is what you'd expect from a Koch-funded think tank. Ironically, Matt Bruenig (no fan of Warren) found that Blahous' own estimate of M4All national health expenditures found an overall $2 trillion savings.

[Shadows]

Corporations can outsource or hire huge sections as independent employers & not pay one nickel. Why would employees get raises when corporations have to pay same taxes.

 Besides the assumptions on savings, on tax compliance etc are ridiculous. Imagine a Democratic candidate proposing to pay for Healthcare extra taxes received from Passing Immigration reform. There is not a single mention of any phase in period. This is a horrendous plan to destroy the Medicare-for-all proposal & the only reason why Warren is ahead is due to the sheer stupidity of people who think idiotic complex plans are good. Warren fans have now become a cult like Trump fans & will support anything & everything.

[Donerail]

Warren's own McKinsey guy thinks MATH means she's gonna win
https://twitter.com/mishaley/status/1169269150923010048

extremely Atlas thread, encourage you to read it in full

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I love the optics of Warren’s healthcare plan, but I’m still concerned with the thousands of corporate money she transferred from her Senate to Presidential campaign.

Yes, she used the "Elizabeth Warren Action Fund" to launder money (I think through the MA Democratic party) back to her campaign to get around the $2700 donation limit in her Senate race.  That fund has donations as high as $15.4k and totals almost $5m.

https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00631861&two_year_transaction_period=2018&cycle=2018&line_number=F3X-11AI&data_type=processed

This was a joint fundraising committee, where part of the money goes to the Party and part to the candidate. Sanders has done the same thing:

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has signed a joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee, the DNC confirmed to POLITICO.

The move, which comes more than two months after Hillary Clinton's campaign signed such an agreement in August, will allow Sanders' team to raise up to $33,400 for the committee as well as $2,700 for the campaign from individual donors at events.

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-2016-fundraising-dnc-215559

Re: Some of the pieces above.

I'm seeing a lot of criticism of Warren's plan that, while it may be fair, is essentially right-wing in nature, such as that (1) Imposing flat costs on corporations for their labor force will disincentivize hiring, or (2) raising taxes will go against the "race to the bottom" of different countries to become more corporate-friendly to multinationals, or (as in the NY Mag piece) that taxing billionaires' wealth at 6% will disincentivize people from creating billion-dollar businesses. Whether one agrees with these critiques or not, they're based in the same logic that the right-wing has been using for decades against progressive reforms, so people buying into them should be aware of that.

The Charles Blahous piece above is interesting- he accuses her of double counting on administrative expenses. It's true that there are two areas of her plan where reduced administrative expenses come into play. But one of them is insurers and the other is providers- not the same thing. He also hand-waves away a number of the components of her plan such as reducing tax evasion (even though her estimate is conservative in the amount that can be reduced). He argues that "if it could have been done it would have", ignoring that she has specific reforms in her plan to reduce tax evasion. He also lazily says she's committed her wealth tax to different priorities (linking to a webpage from June), but ignores her new proposed billionaires' tax. All together it doesn't seem like an objective analysis, which is what you'd expect from a Koch-funded think tank. Ironically, Matt Bruenig (no fan of Warren) found that Blahous' own estimate of M4All national health expenditures found an overall $2 trillion savings.

Like I said, sometimes she is assuming costs on corporations affect workers, and sometimes she isn't, all depending on whether it helps her math.

And there's a difference between $2 Trillion and $13 Trillion.

Also, this is a huge portion of her funding:
https://twitter.com/jadler1969/status/1190999313637351425?s=20

Besides the constitutional issues, this would seem to perpetuate the status quo whereby poor states (yes even Republican ones) spend more of their resources on healthcare than rich states.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Warren's own McKinsey guy thinks MATH means she's gonna win
https://twitter.com/mishaley/status/1169269150923010048

extremely Atlas thread, encourage you to read it in full

I think I agree with much of the substance of this. But the author is blatantly plagiarizing Steven Skowronek without attribution.

[RI]

The notion of prescriptive political cycles is utter nonsense.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

The notion that "it will never pass" is hardly a new argument. But the point of a democracy is to put what you want out there and then run on it to demonstrate public support. Over time, this can result in real changes in policy. You don't get change by pre-emptively reducing the scope of your proposals and never even talking about what your end goal.

Great explanation of why Sanders would be the best nominee!

[Mr. Smith]

The notion of prescriptive political cycles is utter nonsense.

Yes and no.

History may not repeat, but it does rhyme quite a bit.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Regardless of the merits of any Medicare for All plan, there are three glaring problems in how she proposes to pay for it.

1) If it were so easy to increase compliance with the existing tax code to raise more money, why isn't it already being done?  Even if there is money to be gained there, it'll require spending considerably more in auditing costs and the like, so not every dollar gained will be available for other uses.

2) Taxing unrealized capital gains is a horribly stupid idea. Even if only done for marketable securities, it'll be a bureaucratic nightmare.  There's solid reasons why GAAP and IFRS (the two main sets of accounting standards) generally don't allow accruing capital gains (or losses) on an entity's books except when an asset is sold. Moreover, this doesn't really increase taxable income, just does a one-time shift earlier in time, at the cost of a massive increase in compliance and record-keeping costs, so it robs the future to pay the present.

3) There's zero chance that her wealth tax proposal won't be considered to be a direct tax by the Supreme Court.  Existing precedent is quite clear that an ad valorem property tax (which is what her wealth tax is) is a direct tax under the Constitution and thus has to be apportioned by State according to their Representatives.  That will make any wealth tax unmanageable.  If you want to tax the wealthy, there are plenty of other non-direct tax ideas out there to do that, of which the simplest would be to reduce or eliminate the cuts in estate taxes that have happened in the last couple of decades.

At least I have the luxury of living in a non-swing State and thus will have no reason to vote for her even if she gets the nomination.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

1) If it were so easy to increase compliance with the existing tax code to raise more money, why isn't it already being done? 

Because Congress has gutted the IRS

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

1) If it were so easy to increase compliance with the existing tax code to raise more money, why isn't it already being done? 

Because Congress has gutted the IRS

And how will being tied to a healthcare proposal make ungutting the IRS any easier? As a way to help the general fisc it's a good idea, but tying it to a specific spending proposal as a means to fund that specific proposal is as smoky and mirrory as politics gets. Including it as something to deal with healthcare just convinces me how little she cares about the issue. Combined with her other revenue raising ideas, it convinces me the Democrats will be much better off with her nowhere near the ticket and she stays in the Senate, at least for now.

[GP270watch]

 Republicans have broken the government and along comes a candidate saying I'd like to fix it and here are my plans and people are so defeated and accepting of the status quo that they say it can't be fixed.

  It's kinda amazing how Republican orthodoxy has conditioned people to what is possible and what they believe is impossible when it really isn't.

 It is possible for The United States of America to have single payer healthcare because every other industrialized nation in the world has some form of it as the primary way of covering its citizens.

 It is possible to have The IRS go after wealthy tax cheats.

 It is possible to have a competent, honest, safe, and fair immigration system.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I don't think her plan will pass, and even if it does, it will be held up in court for years due to a number of constitutional issues.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I don't think her plan will pass, and even if it does, it will be held up in court for years due to a number of constitutional issues.

Exactly.

This is the question all the Warren/Sanders voters need to ask themselves.

When you vote for your candidate, what are you actually voting to change?  What are you voting for to happen?

Twenty-five years ago the Democrats tried Hillarycare, lost, and got massacred in the midterms, leading Newt Gingrich to control Congress for four years and Pedo Hastert for another eight.  Ten years ago the Democrats tried Obamacare, won but did not get the public option through the Senate, and then got massacred in the midterms, leading Mitch McConnell to control Congress to this day, and Obamacare has had to be rescued by the thinnest of margins by John Roberts and John McCain.

In light of this, do you really believe that, without even controlling Congress, your candidate (who in Sanders case has never gotten a single bill passed in forty years) will be able to pass something ten times more expensive and a hundred times more controversial, and then have it survive the courts and the Republicans when they take power?

Or deep down do you know that they won't be able to pass this bill, and that you're just voting to make a statement?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I don't think her plan will pass, and even if it does, it will be held up in court for years due to a number of constitutional issues.

.


Dems are gonna attempt to by-Pass SCOTUS, by getting rid of filibuster and add PR and DC its own Circuit; therefore, the Conservative CRT will be null and void. If the Dems get  50+ Senators. The reason why FDR's CRT packing didnt work was that: Owen Robert's and Charles Hughes were Mavericks and eventually agreed to New Deal

[GoTfan]

I don't think her plan will pass, and even if it does, it will be held up in court for years due to a number of constitutional issues.

Exactly.

This is the question all the Warren/Sanders voters need to ask themselves.

When you vote for your candidate, what are you actually voting to change?  What are you voting for to happen?

Twenty-five years ago the Democrats tried Hillarycare, lost, and got massacred in the midterms, leading Newt Gingrich to control Congress for four years and Pedo Hastert for another eight.  Ten years ago the Democrats tried Obamacare, won but did not get the public option through the Senate, and then got massacred in the midterms, leading Mitch McConnell to control Congress to this day, and Obamacare has had to be rescued by the thinnest of margins by John Roberts and John McCain.

In light of this, do you really believe that, without even controlling Congress, your candidate (who in Sanders case has never gotten a single bill passed in forty years) will be able to pass something ten times more expensive and a hundred times more controversial, and then have it survive the courts and the Republicans when they take power?

Or deep down do you know that they won't be able to pass this bill, and that you're just voting to make a statement?

Because Democrats ought to stand for something instead of just "we're less bad than the other guys."

[Blue3]

I don't think her plan will pass, and even if it does, it will be held up in court for years due to a number of constitutional issues.

Exactly.

This is the question all the Warren/Sanders voters need to ask themselves.

When you vote for your candidate, what are you actually voting to change?  What are you voting for to happen?

Twenty-five years ago the Democrats tried Hillarycare, lost, and got massacred in the midterms, leading Newt Gingrich to control Congress for four years and Pedo Hastert for another eight.  Ten years ago the Democrats tried Obamacare, won but did not get the public option through the Senate, and then got massacred in the midterms, leading Mitch McConnell to control Congress to this day, and Obamacare has had to be rescued by the thinnest of margins by John Roberts and John McCain.

In light of this, do you really believe that, without even controlling Congress, your candidate (who in Sanders case has never gotten a single bill passed in forty years) will be able to pass something ten times more expensive and a hundred times more controversial, and then have it survive the courts and the Republicans when they take power?

Or deep down do you know that they won't be able to pass this bill, and that you're just voting to make a statement?

At least Sanders would deliver on shifting the country in a more antiwar, anti-military-industrial-complex pathway. As well as have the best executive orders.

It's not like Buttigieg or Biden would be able to get much more done legislatively, unless they're as naive as early-2009-Obama.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The IRS can indeed go after rich tax cheats.  Under the Trump administration, they have deliberately changed their priorities away from auditing wealthy people and toward auditing poor people.  This is something that can be changed with by executive order without any need of Congress.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The IRS can indeed go after rich tax cheats.  Under the Trump administration, they have deliberately changed their priorities away from auditing wealthy people and toward auditing poor people.  This is something that can be changed with by executive order without any need of Congress.

The reason the IRS is targeting poors is that their tax returns take less effort to audit and thus on purely fiscal grounds, it's the most effective use of their limited budget. To go after more of the more complicated returns will require Congressional action to restore funding for audits.

[GP270watch]

The reason the IRS is targeting poors is that their tax returns take less effort to audit and thus on purely fiscal grounds, it's the most effective use of their limited budget. To go after more of the more complicated returns will require Congressional action to restore funding for audits.

 Republicans created this scenario, this is what they want by design. Let their wealthy donors skate and punish the poor.

 There is much more money to be recovered and bigger penalties if you go after rich tax cheats. The impotence to do so is a political will problem and not truly a fiscal one.

[Heebie Jeebie]

This from Kevin Drum is correct:

For starters, to put her plan in place we’d need to win the presidency and the Senate, and that’s a tough task. Then we’d need to eliminate the filibuster, which is very, very unlikely since a few Democrats have already said they wouldn’t join in.

But suppose we miraculously do all that. Actual legislation depends mostly on the Senate, not on President Warren or Speaker Pelosi. This means that health care legislation can’t be more progressive than the 50th most liberal senator, which is likely to be someone like Joe Manchin or Doug Jones. So even in the best case we won’t get the M4A plan that Warren is campaigning on. Not even close.

What this means is that these M4A plans shouldn’t be treated like real legislation to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Rather, they should be treated like Republican tax cut proposals. Nobody bothers to analyze them (except for liberal think tanks, natch) because no one takes them seriously. They are meant merely as markers to show where your heart is. A weak plan shows that you’re a RINO. A big tax cut shows you’re a strong conservative. And a ridiculous plan shows that you’re a lunatic—which might or might not be a good thing depending on the mood of the electorate.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/11/when-is-medicare-4-all-not-really-medicare-4-all/

Candidate plans are rough drafts designed to show where their hearts are at. It's foolish to obsess on the minutiae.