EDITORIAL: A 32 percent payroll tax to cover Democrat health plan

Just as Santa Claus requires children to lose themselves in a world of fantasy and imagination, top Democratic presidential candidates ask that American voters join them in a magical kingdom untethered to traditional notions of reality and reason.

In this mythical land, the government, through a vast army of gnomes and leprechauns, can provide virtually every human need from cradle to grave at no cost to anyone but the evil and diabolical rich, who deserve harsh punishment for their exploitive and privileged ways.

On Tuesday, CNBC released an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders in which he dodged the question of how much Americans will see their taxes increase under his “Medicare for All” proposal. “You’re asking me to come up with an exact detailed plan of how every American — how much you’re going to pay more in taxes, how much I’m going to pay,” Sen. Sanders said. “I don’t think I have to do that right now.”

That’s no surprise — because Bernie and his fellow travelers prefer to mislead the public about the price of socialized medicine, making the laughable assertion that it would save money in the long run. Sen. Sanders has allowed that a government takeover of health care would require tax hikes on the middle-class. That’s more than Sen. Elizabeth Warren has admitted — although she vows to soon reveal the financing of her proposal to nationalize health care.

In the interim, voters should peruse a recent analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan fiscal watchdog group in Washington. The committee found that Sen. Sanders’ tax proposals would cover only half the projected costs of Medicare for All. It also noted that even if the government confiscated 100 percent of wages from those making more than $204,000 a year, “There is not enough annual income available among higher earners to finance” such a plan.

For some perspective, the committee identified potential funding sources that would cover such a massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy. They include a 32 percent payroll tax, a 25 percent income surtax, a 42 percent value-added tax on sales, a doubling of all individual and corporate income tax rates, an 80 percent reduction in all federal non-health care outlays or some combination of the above.

All of these options would obviously have major deleterious ramifications for the nation’s productivity. And none of this addresses how to pay for all the other trillion-dollar giveaways Democrats promise in addition to health care — free college, free day care, free electric vehicles, the Green New Deal and on and on.

Children eventually discover the truth about Santa. Americans of all income levels must at some point realize that most of the promises dominating Democratic presidential politics will devastate the U.S. economy while requiring them to empty their bank accounts.