Bernie Sanders Floats Raising Taxes on Families at or Below the Poverty Line

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Monday laid out his vision to raise taxes on incomes over $29,000 as part of his plan to make Medicare for All a reality in America.

“What we will do, what we will do is have a four percent tax on income, exempting the first 29,000 dollars,” Sanders told a crowd during a campaign stop in Iowa on Monday. “All right good. You’re better at arithmetic than I am.”

“What that means is, if you are that average family in the middle who make $60,000 a year, that means we’re going to tax you on $31,000 at four percent,” he continued:

For perspective, the federal poverty level for a family of five in 2018 was $29,420. It was updated to $30,170 this year.

Sanders, unlike Warren, has been up front about the cost of his Medicare for All proposal, which by some estimates could exceed $60 trillion over the next decade.

Sanders told late-night host Stephen Colbert in September:

Nobody in America will pay any more premiums. No more co-payments, gone. No more out-of-pocket expenses, gone. Nobody will go bankrupt… because of medical bills, that is gone.

“Now having said that, is health care free? No, it is not. So what we do is exempt the first $29,000 of a person’s income. You make less than $29,000, you pay nothing in taxes,” Sanders explained, admitting that taxes will go up for middle class Americans. He argued:

Above that, in a progressive way with the wealthiest people paying the largest percentage, people do pay more in taxes. But if I say to you that right now you’re paying $20,000 a year in a tax called a premium for insurance companies. That’s gone.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), by contrast, claimed that her Medicare for All plan “won’t raise taxes one penny” on middle class families:

She released the details of her Medicare for All proposal after weeks of dodging questions on middle class tax hikes. She contends that her plan will be paid for by “repurposing existing costs, increasing taxes on the wealthy, cutting defense spending, and providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants,” as Breitbart News detailed.