(The Hill)
Naomi Jagoda and Jonathan Easley - 09/23/19 06:00 AM
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is coming under increasing pressure from her 2020 rivals to spell out how she’d pay for her “Medicare for All” proposal.
The pressure comes as Warren builds momentum in the presidential primary race and suggests she is likely to come under a harsher spotlight as other candidates seek to compete with her for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Warren has been asked several times whether taxes would have to go up on the middle class to pay for her universal health care plan, most notably at the debate earlier this month in Houston.
She has consistently avoided giving a yes or no answer, saying instead that middle-class families’ overall health costs would decline but without specifying whether their taxes would increase.
Other Democrats are now accusing her of being less than candid or even dishonest about the consequences Medicare for All, an issue that has split the 2020 Democratic presidential field.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the front-runner in the race who is trying to hold off Warren, has made the issue central to his attacks on Medicare for All, saying that at least Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been honest that middle-class taxes would have to go up.
Sanders has put out a paper on potential financing options for Medicare for All, which include tax increases that would only apply to the rich and corporations as well as a 4 percent premium paid by employees that would apply to families making more than $29,000. He has explicitly said that taxes would go up for the middle class but that health care costs would go down.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has lost ground to Warren in recent months, last week offered one of the sharper criticisms of the Massachusetts senator over the issue.
“I think that if you are proud of your plan and it's the right plan, you should defend it in straightforward terms,” Buttigieg said in an interview on CNN.
“And I think it's puzzling that when everybody knows the answer to that question, of whether her plan and Sen. Sanders's plan will raise middle-class taxes, is ‘yes,’ why you wouldn't just say so and then explain why you think that's the better way forward.”
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