Grabien Mobile App
Get Grabien on the go!
  Collapse  

Trevor Noah Presses Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘How Do You Pay’ For Free Health Care and Education?

‘You always see people coming in with economic arguments, and they say, look, these numbers don’t really add up’
By Grabien Staff

RUSH EXCERPT:

NOAH: "But then, the pragmatic side of it comes in, as you said. How do you pay for these? You always see people coming in with economic arguments, and they say, look, these numbers don’t really add up. You know, in order to get healthcare for everybody, this is what it would cost. That is going to be troubling. Even if you reverse the tax deal, that’s only 5% of what we need to pay for Medicare. How do you pay for education and all these ideas?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: "This is an excellent, excellent question. There’s a lot of the back-of-the-envelope stuff based on our values. I sat down with a Nobel prize economist last week — I can’t believe I can say that, it’s really weird —
( laughter )
OCASIO-CORTEZ: "— But one of the things we saw is, if people pay their fair share, if corporations and the ultra wealthy — for example, as Warren Buffett likes to say, if he pays as much as his secretary pays, 15% tax rate, if corporations paid — if we reverse the tax bill, raise our corporate tax rate to 28%, which is not even as high as it was before, if we do those two things and close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there. That’s $2 trillion in ten years, and it’s one of the wide estimates is that it’s going to take $3 trillion to $4 trillion to transition us to 100% renewable economy. So we have $2 trillion from folks paying their fair share which they weren’t paying before the trump tax bill. They weren’t paying that before the trump tax bill. If we get people to pay their fair share, that’s $2 trillion in ten years. If we implement a carbon tax on top of that to transition and incentivize people away from fossil fuels, the we implement a carb tax, an additional amount, a large amount of revenue that we can have. Then the last key, which is extremely important is re-prioritization. Just last year we gave the military a $700 billion budget increase, which they didn’t even ask for! They’re, like, we don’t want another fighter jet! They’re, like, don’t give us another nuclear bomb, you know?"
NOAH: "Right."
OCASIO-CORTEZ: "They didn’t even ask for it and we gave it to them. So a lot of what we need to do reprioritize what we want accomplish as a nation. Really what this is about is saying healthcare is important enough for us to put first. Education is important enough for us to put first. That is a decision that requires political and moral courage from both parts of the aisle, period."

(via Mediaite)

Like our work? Support the cause.
$
/