If you ever wondered how much Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) vast array of policy proposals would cost, we now have a reasonably good estimate from his own staff. The answer is about $50 trillion over the next decade. Sanders may or may not be a “democratic socialist” — whatever that means — but he clearly is a soak-the-rich radical who would dramatically expand the government’s role, from cradle to grave.

Whether most Americans prefer Sanders’s statist agenda to the alleged abuses of corporations and Wall Street (the notorious “top 1 percent”) is what defines this election. Whatever the case, Sanders is proposing a hugely expensive transformation.

Let’s examine the $50 trillion. The list below shows various spending programs that Sanders has proposed, with one important exception: The first item on the list is the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the deficits under existing policies for the next decade. That figure is $13.1 trillion.

Sanders’s Spending, 2021-2030:
1. Deficits under existing policies: $13.1 trillion
2. “Free” college for all and the cancellation of existing student debt: $2.2 trillion
3. Expand Social Security and other retirement benefits: $1.4 trillion (estimated by the Progressive Policy Institute)
4. Housing for all: $2.5 trillion
5. Eliminating household medical debt: $81 billion
6. Green New Deal (programs to stop global warming): $16.3 trillion
7. Universal child care and preschool: $1.5 trillion
8. Medicare-for-all: $17.5 trillion
Total: $54.6 trillion

The problem is that sanders has no idea as to how pay for these progarms
“Sanders’s proposals won’t raise nearly as much money as he thinks they will,” says Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “Even if they did, they won’t pay for everything he wants.”
For example, Sanders proposes a wealth tax on taxpayers with a net worth (assets minus liabilities) of $32 million or more. The tax would gradually rise from 1 percent up to 8 percent on fortunes exceeding $10 billion. Sanders estimates this would raise $4.35 trillion over a decade.

Not likely, says Gleckman. About half of the wealth of the rich is contained in privately held businesses that, unlike publicly traded stocks, are hard to value. He thinks the tax would raise far less than expected. “Rich people won’t stand by and pay taxes,” he says.
“They will hire expensive lawyers to avoid taxes.” Similar problems would erode revenue from a proposed tax on financial transactions, he says.

Even with some added tax revenue, there still would be a $25 trillion gap between Sanders’s spending plans and an equivalent amount of new tax revenue, says analyst Ben Ritz of the PPI. Federal spending would approach 40 percent of gross domestic product, up from about 20 percent now.

“Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in? And the answer is no,” Sanders said. “We’re making some progress. But historically everybody knows that younger people do not vote in the kind of numbers that older people vote in. I think that will change in the general election.”

So he has alienated moderates in his own party (including African Americans, whose massive support for former vice president Joe Biden he ignores, preferring to attribute Biden’s success to “corporate Democrats”), and has an even worse shot attracting — and is off-putting to — the sort of suburban women who helped deliver the House majority to Democrats in 2018. But don’t worry, young people will make up for all that! Democrats are supposed to take on faith that the people Sanders needs to make up for those he has given up on and those who have not yet appeared will save the party in November.

Democrats need not accept this preposterous bet, and on Super Tuesday did not. It surely makes more sense to bet on the voters who actually did show up in droves just as they did in 2018. (Consider what happened in Texas: “With unwavering support from black voters in the cities and a surge in the suburbs, Mr. Biden notched his most significant win of the primary calendar here … netting him a large and unexpected share of Texas’s 228 pledged delegates.”

The Sanders strategy — if you vote for me, they will come — is so ludicrous that Sanders is not trying to smooth over the rough edges he has spent a lifetime.