During his “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, Republican presidential front-runner appeared to come out in favor of a form of single payer health insurance for the uninsured (although he does says he’s going to “take care of everybody”) and openly called for raising taxes on the wealthy. [emphasis added]
Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 40, 50, 55 percent.
Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?
Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private. But–”
Scott Pelley: Universal health care.
Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.
Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?
Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably–
Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?
Donald Trump: —the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.
Trump was equally forthcoming about his plans to raise taxes on the wealthy:
Scott Pelley: Revolution is easy, governing is hard and what I’d like to get to is how you intend to govern the country if you are elected president. What’s your tax plan?
Donald Trump: It’s a substantial reduction for the middle-income people. Because our middle class, Scott, is being absolutely decimated. It will be a corporate also reduction, I think it’ll be a great incentive for corporations.
Scott Pelley: Who are you going to raise taxes on?
Donald Trump: If you look at actually raise, some very wealthy are going to be raised. Some people that are getting unfair deductions are going to be raised. But overall it’s going to be a tremendous incentive to grow the economy and we’re going to take in the same or more money. And I think we’re going to have something that’s going to be spectacular.
Scott Pelley: But Republicans don’t raise taxes.
Donald Trump: Well, we’re not raising taxes.
Scott Pelley: What kind of Republican are you?
Donald Trump: I mean the only, well, I’m a pretty good Republican. But, I will tell you this, I do have some differences. I don’t want to have certain people on Wall Street getting away with paying no tax.
As I wrote two weeks ago, Trump is already running a general election campaign. Rather than pander to the GOP base, he is advertising loudly beforehand that on issues such as taxes, health care, and trade he is not your standard conservative.
Monday morning Trump unveiled some of the details of his tax plan. The seven current tax brackets will be cut to just four: zero percent, ten percent, twenty percent, and twenty-five percent. Business taxes across the board will be lowered to just 15%. The immoral Estate Tax will be fully repealed. The wealthy will lose many loopholes.
Single people who earn less than $25, 000 and married couples who earn less than $50,000 will pay no income tax. This is another proposal that defies in the face of a strongly held conservative belief that all income earners should pay some taxes, even if it is just 1%, in order to have skin in the game.
Overall, Trump is lowering taxes and has agreed to repeal ObamaCare.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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