Vermont isn’t buying what Bernie Sanders is selling
As he campaigns for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is selling Medicare for All while refusing to acknowledge the dramatically higher taxes that go with it.
Democrats would be wise to look at how Vermont voters have reacted to Sanders’ policy prescriptions. Vermont is as progressive and true-blue as any state in the Union, but Sanders’ home state is heading in the opposite direction.
In 2011, Vermont’s heavily Democratic legislature directed state officials to develop plans for a statewide single-payer health plan dubbed Green Mountain Care. Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin championed the concept as it was fleshed out over the next several years.
Reality struck in 2014 when its costs were finally tallied. Vermont voters were stunned by the prospect of a new 11.5 percent payroll tax and a 9.5 percent income tax. Statewide outcries doomed Green Mountain Care.
Shumlin issued a statement saying, “This is not the right time” for enacting single payer. Running for reelection at the time, Shumlin won less than 50 percent of the vote in heavily Democratic Vermont. And this when he was chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
Nationwide polls today show that just as in Vermont in 2011, a strong majority of Americans like the idea of universal health coverage. But public support plummets when voters are told that Medicare for All would raise their taxes dramatically and would eliminate all private insurance, including the employer-provided coverage enjoyed by 150 million Americans.
Support drops even further when voters are told that wait times for many services, especially expensive ones, would increase. Wait times have grown significantly in every country with socialized medicine.
To fund his $32 trillion Medicare for All, Sanders avoids telling voters that massive increase in their income taxes would be required. Instead, he crisscrosses the country, promising to make the rich pay their fair share.
Ignoring Alan Greenspan’s maxim “Whatever you tax, you get less of,” Sanders wants a top federal estate tax rate of 77 percent, up from today’s 40 percent.
Meanwhile, Vermont, one of only 14 states that impose an estate tax, has moved to lessen its bite. In 2016, while Sanders was off seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont exempted the first $2.75 million from its punitive 16 percent death tax.
In this year’s budget address, Gov. Phil Scott said, “Tax professionals consistently tell me that because we are so far out of line with other states, the estate tax is a factor in retirees leaving. Vermonters impacted by this tax are well advised by tax professionals, and they are highly mobile.”
Voting with their feet is exactly what the state’s residents are doing. Since 2010, 10,000 more people have moved out than moved in. For a state with only a little over 600,000 residents, that’s a big deal.
Gov. Scott’s solution? Increase the estate tax exemption from $2.75 million to $5.75 million.
Loaded down with a raft of expensive social programs, Vermont’s tax burden is heavy. Its business tax climate is one of the worst in the country, down there with the likes of New Jersey, New York, California, and Connecticut.
Sanders remains popular in Vermont — he was reelected in a landslide in 2018 — but his policy prescriptions are completely out of line with his home state’s voters and fiscal realities. While he proposes milking the rich for everything he can get, Vermont is trying to nurse the golden goose back to health.
High-profile proposals like Medicare for All as proposed by Sanders strike a responsive chord for many. But Vermonters are facing the reality summed up so eloquently by Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Great article, as usual, backed up with facts that you don’t get in other places.
Howie, all forms of taxation are theft. Arguing about how the stolen money should or shouldn’t be spent is a distraction from and an endorsement of the theft. Stop reinforcing the false left/right paradigm and do some research. Your ignorance about a subject you claim to be an expert on is astounding. As Henry Ford once said; “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”