Thread by @AndrewCFollett

Let's talk about math...specifically Sanders "Medicare for All" plan.

A study by George Mason University estimated that the plan would cost an estimated $32.6 trillion in new federal spending over 10 years.

mercatus.org/publications/f…

How much is that?

#MAGA #tcot

1/MANY

Well, GMU study estimated that DOUBLING all federal individual and corporate income taxes couldn't cover the additional costs.

A 2016 left-wing Urban Institute said about the same thing, estimating it would cost $32 trillion over same time period.

urban.org/research/publi…
2/MANY

So far, the left wing response to this has been to shrug and say "we will find the money somewhere." The only specific cuts they've proposed are to ICE, child detention, and the US military.

So let's do some back of envelope math to see if that's possible...

3/MANY

Let's put that $32.6 trillion number in perspective... First off, it is about 50% more than the current US national debt of $21.3 trillion, which took 242 years to create.

4/MANY

Child detention is about $1 billion ($10 billion over budget window) annually spread across all agencies. This is ABSOLUTE CHUMP CHANGE in the $3.8 trillion dollar US federal annual budget.

5/MANY

Cutting that is only equivalent to 0.0026% of current total US annual federal spending....and would provide only 0.16% of the needed additional cash to fund Medicare for all....less than one-fifth of one percent of the way...

6/MANY

What about going all the way and #AbolishICE ?

ICE cost $5.3 billion in 2015...so eliminating it would only save $53 billion over the 10 yrs

(IPage 57)
dhs.gov/.../files/publ…

That's 0.16% of the needed cash ....less than one-fifth of one percent of the way there.

7/MANY

Saving the big boy for last, if you ELIMINATED THE ENTIRE US MILITARY...not paying a single soldier, trashing every aircraft carrier, selling every tank for scrap...what would that do?

We're talking trashing ALL the Military here.

8/MANY

Well, military spending was $598 billion annually in 2015. That means if you cut ALL of it for 10 years YOU'D ONLY RAISE 18% of the money necessary for Medicare for All!

Again, eliminating THE ENTIRE US MILITARY would get you less than 1/5th of the cash.

9/MANY

"Medicare for All" is such a bad idea that VERMONT (not a right-wing state) abandoned the idea after passing it into law because actually doing it would make taxes much too high.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_h…

10/MANY

Even if you look solely from a GDP perspective, this still increases costs massively.

GMU estimates the plan would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the first 10 years of its implementation (2022–2031).

11/ MANY

This projected INCREASE in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022.

This amount would rise to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and continue to rise thereafter, according to the George Mason University (GMU) study

12/MANY

Full disclosure, my Masters in a related field is from GMU.

But literally flat out DOUBLING all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.

13/MANY

GMU does lean libertarian...but the left-leaning Urban Institute (UI) study from 2016 said about the same thing, estimating it would cost $32 trillion over the same time period...which is within 2% of the Mason estimate.

urban.org/research/publi…

14/MANY

UI states Sanders’s new tax proposals, intended to finance all health and nonhealth spending proposed, would raise $15.3 trillion from 2017 to 2026—raising slightly less than half of the new money needed...even with a static score assumption of no impact on the economy.
15/MANY

Even if you added those taxes and eliminated the entire military and ICE, you just be a little over half-way to raising the cash.

Sanders' "the Koch's are evil" response is just stupid. Medicare for All would be a costly disaster.

16/FINAL