This isn’t how Americans have traditionally understood entitlements. Democrats once promoted major government programs as “earned” benefits. Social Security and Medicare both feature broad-based payroll taxes as a primary funding source. People qualify for benefits in part based on their contribution history.
Warren Asks What the Country Can Do for You
Elizabeth Warren’s release Friday of a more specific health-care platform only raised more questions about Medicare for All and its effects on the middle class. Conservatives as well as Ms. Warren’s Democratic opponents questioned the assumptions behind her claim that she can enact a single-payer plan without raising taxes on the middle class. Yet the harshest critic may be Ms. Warren herself. “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” John F. Kennedy, who once held Ms. Warren’s Senate seat, urged. She refuses to ask the middle class to pay a dime for her costly proposal.
Take Ms. Warren’s assumptions at face value, even if doing so requires a knowing suspension of disbelief. Assume she can reduce the 10-year cost of a single-payer system from the $34 trillion in new federal spending estimated by the liberal Urban Institute to a mere $20.5 trillion. Assume her program would reduce administrative costs without encouraging fraud. Assume also that her proposed wealth tax won’t generate massive tax evasion—she claims a Warren administration would generate $2.3 trillion in new revenue by cracking down on tax avoidance—and that not a penny of her $9 trillion in assessments on employers will end up being paid by workers.
Ms. Warren envisions a $20 trillion expansion of government—the largest in American history—paid for by a fraction of the population. She foresees unlimited “free” health care for millions of families, without so much as a $100 copayment, premium, assessment, tax or other fee.
Sure, the earned entitlement always had an element of fiction. Social Security and Medicare pay benefits based on current cash flows, with their respective trust funds containing little more than promises to pay future benefits. Urban Institute estimates show that even wealthy seniors will receive more in Social Security and Medicare benefits than they paid in taxes. But Ms. Warren’s plan would dispense with the pretense of social insurance, instead creating a crass form of political plunder that uses federal largess to buy votes.
In turning government programs into a version of “Oprah’s Favorite Things”—everyone gets a free car, paid for by somebody else—Ms. Warren follows the example of President Obama. He talked of social solidarity, saying “we’re all in this together,” but shied away from asking anyone other than “the rich” to pay for his new government programs. In 2008 candidate Obama made a “firm pledge” not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year, “not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
The “firm pledge” lasted two weeks. In February 2009 Mr. Obama raised tobacco taxes to fund an expansion of children’s health insurance. Then, after ObamaCare took effect in 2013, the law led at least 4.7 million Americans to receive insurance-cancellation notices. In the years since, the health-insurance market has shrunk by four million people, because those who don’t qualify for subsidies can’t afford coverage—what Bill Clinton called “the craziest thing in the world.” Working families ended up bearing the burden of Mr. Obama’s new programs.
Therein lies the true lesson for the American people. Elizabeth Warren may not ask the middle class to fund Medicare for All—at least not until she’s safely in office—but one can rest assured that, should she succeed in enacting her scheme, all American families will pay.
This post was originally published at The Wall Street Journal.