In advance of the Nevada caucuses, the Las Vegas Sun editorial board invited the top Democratic candidates for interviews about how their policies would shape America and Nevada. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders declined numerous requests for in-person and telephone interviews, so today we present a brief look at their plans based on their statements at debates, information from their websites and internet research on the candidates. This is the fifth and final segment in a series of stories about the candidates.
Meet the candidates
Although Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have staked out positions on the left edge of the Democratic field by taking similar stances on several key issues, they’re actually vastly different candidates.
Sanders, the democratic socialist, is a party outsider and culture warrior with a reputation for taking uncompromising stances in the name of ideology. He prides himself on being allergic to incremental steps and is often dismissive of opinions that differ from his own — traits that have drawn unflattering comparisons between himself and Donald Trump.
In contrast, Warren has taken a problem-solving, coalition-building approach during her seven years in the Senate and, before that, as a government adviser on consumer issues and corporate oversight. A key case in point was Warren’s instrumental role in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Board, which she proposed in 2007 while serving as a law professor at Harvard. When President Barack Obama selected Warren to create the agency, she assembled and led a team of academics, industry insiders and policy experts, and accomplished her task when the agency opened its doors in 2011. Since then, it has returned more than $12.4 billion to consumers who were cheated by financial companies.
Certainly, Warren and Sanders have similarities — both present themselves as aggressive champions for economic equality and take progressive stances on health care, wealth taxes and free college.
But even their plans on those issues differ in some respects. Here’s a look at some of both candidates’ key proposals:
Warren
Warren stands out with her wealth tax, the most aggressive in the field. It includes a 2% tax on household net worth above $50 million and 6% above $1 billion, and it also includes a number of other elements such as a 40% “exit fee” for multimillionaires who renounce their citizenship to dodge her wealth tax. Warren says the package will generate $2.75 trillion over 10 years.
The Massachusetts senator also would impose a 7% tax on corporate profits above $100 million, which she says will generate $1 trillion in the next 10 years.
Warren, a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution, offers a climate plan that calls for $3 trillion in spending.
She claims her wealth tax will provide funding for several initiatives: student debt cancellation, universal child care and pre-kindergarten classes, $800 billion in new federal funding for public schools, $1 trillion toward Medicare for All, addressing the opioid crisis and making college tuition-free.
Like others in the field, Warren supports a pathway to citizenship for long-term undocumented immigrants and would make illegal border crossings a civil offense as opposed to a criminal one.
Sanders
Sanders was a pioneer on Medicare for All, having long advocated for a single-payer health care system. His version would cost up to $40 trillion and would be funded by tax increases for most Americans. He would also extend health coverage to undocumented immigrants.
The Vermont senator’s climate plan also comes with a whopping price tag — $16 trillion. That’s many times the amount most of his opponents would spend. The plan calls for modernizing the energy grid nationwide and building new solar, wind and geothermal sources across the nation. Sanders also would send $200 billion to poor nations to help battle climate change on a global level. The funding for his plan would come partly from taxing the fossil fuels industry.
Sanders would impose an aggressive wealth tax that works on a graduated scale, from households with $32 million of net worth paying 1%, to those with a net worth of $10 billion paying 8% and with several steps in between. He would also boost the corporate income tax rate back to 35%, undoing Trump’s reduction of the rate to 21%, and would impose incremental increases in the rate for companies with CEO who out-earn median workers by a 50-to-1 ratio or higher.
Sanders supports full voting rights for incarcerated citizens, including felons.
After being criticized for his record on gun safety, which includes votes in the Senate against the Brady Bill and in favor of protecting gun manufacturers from legal liability when their products are used to commit crimes, Sanders is calling for universal background checks, along with bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. He doesn’t go as far as some of his opponents, who call for licensing and registration of weapons, but he does favor registration of assault weapons.
In conclusion
In Warren, Americans would be served by a left-of-center president. In Sanders, the nation would get a far more extreme leader, in terms of both policy and temperament. The difference would be profound.
Warren has demonstrated a clear-eyed, results-oriented approach to leadership along with a proven ability to surround herself with capable professionals. As a result, she could be counted on to form an effective, thoughtful and qualified Cabinet, and to work with lawmakers in a coalition-building manner.
A Sanders presidency threatens to fill the White House with extremists who are far more interested in tearing things down — ala the Trump administration — than finding constructive ways to fix social problems. As with Trump, it’s highly unlikely that knowledgeable people with workable solutions and a knack for compromise would be part of a Sanders team.
Instead, the likely outcome would be four years of the type of chaos the nation has experienced since Trump took office.