Sanders: If LBJ followed Clinton ‘we would not have Medicare’
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Sen. Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton on Friday over her refusal to increase payroll taxes to expand family leave, arguing that alternative approaches would jeopardize funding for the proposed benefit.
“Here is an area where Secretary Clinton and I have a different point of view,” he said in a short speech at the DoubleTree Hotel. “She has talked in vague and general terms about the need for paid family leave and medical leave. She has not described how she will pay for it.”
“I’m the only candidate running, in either party, who will tell you my goal, my pledge, is to raise incomes, not taxes, on the middle class,” Clinton said in a speech in Des Moines earlier this week.
That’s not true — almost the entire Republican field has pledged not to raise taxes and every major contender has released proposals along those lines. But it does set up a contrast with Sanders, who argued that more a broad-based tax “enshrines” middle class benefits and keeps them from being gutted down the line. He estimated the average cost to a worker under his plan would be $1.61 a week.
“If Lyndon Baines Johnson had taken the same position as Secretary Clinton that a small payroll tax was unacceptable, we would not have Medicare in this country,” Sanders said.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-if-lbj-followed-clinton-we-would-not-have-medicare
(note in the usual MSNBC style the article ends with a nonissue attack on Sanders. I looked for a different source but could not find one at the moment. What I posted is the real news part)
= new reply since forum marked as read
