It's NOT "Free Stuff" It's Using Taxes to Fund What We Actually Need [View all]

[amborin]

http://usuncut.com/politics/its-not-free-stuff-its-using-taxes-to-fund-what-we-actually-need/

corporate media’s pundits and the corporate-owned political class love to dismiss Bernie Sanders’ platforms as “free stuff” that can’t realistically be provided at a nationwide scale, all while completely ignoring the vast multitude of corporate entitlements that cost trillions to maintain. It’s time to set the record straight.

Bernie’s proposals of a free, universal Medicare For All program, free public education through the 4-year college level, 12 weeks of paid family leave, and providing millions of new jobs through investments in infrastructure are lofty goals, but the money to fund them is there if we were to simply cut the most wasteful and fraudulent corporate welfare packages that help a small wealthy few Americans while burdening the rest.

First, let’s add up the total annual cost of Sanders’ costliest policy proposals, using estimates provided by the Sanders campaign:

Medicare for All: $1.38 trillion
New WPA: $200 billion (5-year limit)
Free college: $75 billion
Paid family leave: $31 billion
Total annual cost: $1.49 trillion

That may seem like a lot on its own, but the funding can easily be raised by cutting the “free stuff” we currently lavish on the wealthy. Multiple entitlement programs that exclusively benefit multinational corporations (like tax breaks for hedge fund managers, rich kids’ inheritances, and CEO bonuses, handouts to the oil and pharmaceutical industries, costly weapons programs and unnecessary wars, subsidies for “too-big-to-fail” banks, handouts to corporate behemoths cemented in last year’s omnibus spending bill, and tax loopholes for multinational corporations can easily be sacrificed to benefit the other 99.9 percent of Americans. Here’s the annual cost breakdown of those programs:

Allowing Wall Street to trade tax-free: $352 billion
Extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy: $277.6 billion
Government contracts for the 200 wealthiest corporations: $176 billion
Lifting cap on Social Security taxing: $120 billion
Money lost to corporate tax havens: $100 billion
Wall Street welfare: $83 billion
Corporate welfare in omnibus spending bill: $65 billion
Surveillance-industrial complex: $52.6 billion
Tax breaks for wealthy investors: $51 billion (average over 5-year period)
War in Afghanistan: $35 billion
Oil company subsidies: $37.5 billion
Tax breaks for rich brats: $26.9 billion
New nuclear missiles: $18 billion
Ford-class aircraft carrier: $15 billion
Federal war on drugs: $15 billion
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: $10 billion
Foreign war slush fund: $8 billion
Walmart subsidies: $7.8 billion
Tax breaks for CEO bonuses: $7 billion
Littoral Combat Ship: $2 billion
Unusable planes for Afghan Air Force: $800 million
Keeping the Guantanamo Bay detention center open: $454 million
Total annual savings: $1.46 trillion

As it stands right now, all of these aforementioned programs amount to $1.34 trillion every year in “free stuff” to those who need it the least. Eliminating these handouts would pay for 90 percent of Bernie’s policy platform. The remainder can be made up through nominal increases in the payroll tax (Sanders proposed a 0.2 percent increase to find paid family leave) and a slight increase in income taxes to fund Sanders’ sweeping healthcare program.