Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) recently announced her bid to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2020. When she made her presidential announcement, she also promised a series of left-leaning promises. It's important to realize that not even a 100 percent tax on millionaires would be able to fund all of Kamala Harris' campaign promises.
While making her campaign announcement, she used the time to endorse her new policies she hopes to implement. Those include "Medicare-for-All," tuition-free college and universal pre-kindergarten public education.
I’m running to be president of the people, by the people, and for all people. I’m running to fight for an America where you only have to work one job to pay the bills and where health care and education are fundamental rights. pic.twitter.com/8wjehsmX7i
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 28, 2019
Per IJR.com:
“I am running to declare once and for all that health care is a fundamental right, and we will deliver that right with ‘Medicare-for-All,'” Harris said. “I am running to declare education is a fundamental right, and we will guarantee that right with universal pre-K and debt-free college.”
While Harris had a lot to say about why she believes these programs should be guaranteed to the American people via the government, she didn’t have a lot to say when it came to funding these programs.
A study by the Mercatus Center found that "Medicare-for-All" would cost over $32 trillion over 10 years. Then you can add in the free college for all, which would cost $807 billion over a decade, according to the Tax Policy Center. Then there's the universal pre-K. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the cost for that to be around $190 billion over 10 years. Combine the three and you have $33 trillion in expenses over the next decade.
So would a 100 percent tax on millionaires make this work? In a word, no.
So could a 100 percent tax bracket on anyone making more than $1 million per year cover Harris’ proposals for “Medicare-for-All,” tuition-free college, and universal pre-K?
Not by a long shot.
Using the most recent numbers available from the IRS, millionaires could have only paid in $1.36 trillion if they were part of a 100 percent tax bracket. That totals to just $13.6 trillion over 10 years. And according to Tom Church of the Hoover Institution, this number could be high by as much as 25 percent.
“You’d have to subtract out the taxes already paid by millionaire filers,” Church said, “which
include federal income or payroll taxes, along with state and local income or property taxes.”The approximate calculation shows Harris being at least $19 trillion short, but the impact of the tax bracket could result in much less revenue over 10 years. As Church pointed out to IJR, these numbers assume that the American economy would remain static and void of any recession or boom, which is unlikely.
Kamala Harris is using the Bernie Sanders "everything for free" blueprint to gain the support of young Americans, when in reality nothing is free.
