The short answer, of course, is you (and I) do.
The $125 billion price tag for Edwards' many ideas--from health care to poverty reduction to energy--is highly likely to turn off voters, since there's still no free lunch.
According to this Associated Press story, Edwards is a little shy about how he'll pay for all this feel-good legislation. But I can tell you where the money will come from: everybody.
To pay for some of his priorities, Edwards would roll back Bush's tax cuts on Americans making more than $200,000 a year. He also said he would consider raising capital gains taxes to help fund his plans and raise or eliminate the $90,000 cap on individual earnings subject to Social Security taxes to help cover the projected shortfall in the system.
Edwards also has proposed spending cuts such as cutting subsidies for the banks that make student loans for a savings of $6 billion a year. He would also save money by trimming the number of Department of Housing and Urban Development employees, negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices and cutting agricultural subsidies for corporate farms, although the campaign did not yet have estimates of how much that would bring in.
Good luck getting Congress to do all that. Even assuming you could "trim" the number of government employees anywhere (they just end up somewhere else in the system), you won't make friends in agriculture by cutting subsidies and rolling back the tax cuts that have fueled the recovery since 2001 would send unemployment up and productivity down.
Besides all that, Edwards' health care plan would require all employers to offer health insurance for employees. So whether your company has 1 employee or 5,000, you would have to figure health insurance into the cost of doing business. So, either prices will go up fairly dramatically or many smaller businesses will go under.
It's a good thing John Edwards has no chance of being elected. America can't afford it.
Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.
|