Hillary Clinton

MrWendel

(1,881 posts) Sun Feb 21, 2016, 08:02 PM Feb 2016

Fareed Zakaria: Sanders’ Plans Make Republicans Look Serious

http://www.investors.com/politics/on-the-left/fareed-zakaria-sanders-plans-make-republicans-look-serious/

By Fareed Zakaria

A key sign of the Republican Party’s dysfunction in recent years has been its unwillingness to produce serious policy proposals. Instead, its leading lights routinely present outlandish plans that they know well can never be enacted or in which the math simply doesn’t add up.

What will Republicans do this year if elected to the White House? All GOP candidates would repeal Obamacare, some would pass a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, and others would deport several million undocumented workers. Needless to say, none of this will actually happen.

Take their tax plans. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that Marco Rubio’s would produce deficits of $8.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Ted Cruz’s plan clocks in at $10.2 trillion in deficits. And Donald Trump, predictably, outdoes them all with a proposal that would add $11.2 trillion in deficits and would increase the national debt by nearly 80% of GDP over the next two decades.

Even House Speaker Paul Ryan, famous for his budgetary expertise and pragmatism, proposed a budget in 2014 in which the math was unworkable.

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Fareed Zakaria: Sanders’ Plans Make Republicans Look Serious (Original Post) MrWendel Feb 2016 OP

K & R SunSeeker Feb 2016 #1

My husband made me watch the Zakaria's segment on CNN in where Fareed discussed this..... FrenchieCat Feb 2016 #2

"Reality based" Rose Siding Feb 2016 #7

Sanders' platform is unrealistic at best Gothmog Feb 2016 #3

This message was self-deleted by its author dreamnightwind Feb 2016 #4

I made a pissed-off rebuttal, didn't see it was Hillary group so self-deleted. dreamnightwind Feb 2016 #5

This is an excellent read! pandr32 Feb 2016 #6

SunSeeker

(51,572 posts)

1. K & R

Reply to MrWendel (Original post)

Sun Feb 21, 2016, 08:11 PM

Feb 2016

FrenchieCat

(68,867 posts)

2. My husband made me watch the Zakaria's segment on CNN in where Fareed discussed this.....

Reply to MrWendel (Original post)

Sun Feb 21, 2016, 08:18 PM

Feb 2016

Hubby had DVRed it, and told me I needed to watch it....
since we are both accountants, and he a financial planner.

The 30+ Trillion would be the end of our party! the generous forecasts Sanders is making are in actual unicorn territory.
Will would be laughed out of the election. He would not even win one state!

Enter Bernie Sanders, who makes the Republicans look like models of sobriety and scholarly exactitude. The proposals listed on his campaign website add up to around $18 trillion to $20 trillion over the next decade, according to the New York Times. Adding Emory’s Kenneth Thorpe’s higher estimate on the health plan brings the total cost to above $30 trillion.

This week, four respected economists who served Democratic presidents wrote a letter bluntly pointing out that “no credible economic research” supports Sanders’ economic assumptions and predictions. They were referring to the claims by a Sanders enthusiast, George Friedman, who has tried to make Sanders’ math work.

To do so, Friedman assumes that per-capita growth would average 4.5% (more than double the rate over the last three decades), and the employment-to-population ratio would suddenly reverse its long decline and reach 65%, the highest ever.

Even more magically, productivity growth would rise to 3.18%. As Kevin Drum has pointed out in Mother Jones, “there has never been a 10-year period since World War II in which productivity grew by 3.18%.”