Hypocritical Bernie? Sanders' Debate Answer Appears To Contradict His Own Attack on Trump
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders may have previously debunked his own claim that “Medicare for All” would encourage corporations to raise wages since they won’t have to pay for employee health care.
During Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate, the Vermont senator quarreled with former Vice President Joe Biden over whether his “Medicare for All” plan would cause wage growth since corporations would no longer have to cover the cost of employee health care.
“The president thinks … the uh, my friend from Vermont thinks that the employer’s going to give you back if you negotiate as union all these years, got a cut in wages because you got insurance,” Biden asserted on stage, asking if “they’re going to give back that money?”
“As a matter of fact, they will,” Sanders replied.
Watch the exchange below.
The senator’s claim suggests that corporate actors, when faced with overhead relief in the form of universal health care, will choose to invest in their workers and raise wages.
However, in a February 2019 Op-Ed for The New York Times, co-written with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sanders argued against that principle as it applied to the 2017 tax cuts implemented by President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.
Sanders and Schumer criticized public corporations for using the money saved from the 19 percent corporate tax cut to conduct stock buybacks instead of passing the savings on to their employees.
“Fueled by the Trump tax cut, in 2018, United States corporations repurchased more than $1 trillion of their own stock, a staggering figure and the highest amount ever authorized in a single year,” the pair wrote.
“This has become an enormous problem for workers and for the long-term strength of the economy.”
They attacked the disproportionate wealth of stockholders, adding “when a company buys back its stock, boosting its value, the benefits go overwhelmingly to shareholders and executives, not workers.”
Stock buybacks also restrict corporate “capacity to reinvest profits more meaningfully in the company in terms of R&D, equipment, higher wages, paid medical leave, retirement benefits and worker retraining.”
So, when handed a near 50 percent cut in total tax burden, corporations chose to buy back their outstanding shares instead of helping workers by increasing pay.
Many corporations, notably Walmart, did, in fact, raise employee wages in the aftermath of the tax cut. However, if Sanders believes that relieving corporations of cost obligations doesn’t lead to wage growth, there appears to be a serious discrepancy in his argument for “Medicare for All” as a catalyst for it.
Biden hit Sanders hard on his optimism at the debate, retorting “for a socialist you got a lot more confidence in corporate America than I do.”
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.
For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
