I didn’t realize just how nefarious she really was.
Warren’s approach is so flawed that it’s amazing that her campaign would spend the money on putting it into a prime-time Olympics commercial that was presumably designed not to alienate people but rather to get them to vote for her. You really have to see it to believe it.
The first problem is mathematical. U.S. gross domestic product is about $15 trillion a year. Increasing infrastructure “investment” to the 9% Chinese level that Warren cites would mean an additional $1 trillion a year in government spending. That’s an immense spending increase. To put it in context, the entire federal government spent about $3.6 trillion in 2011, on revenues of about $2.3 trillion.
Where would this money come from? Not tax increases, right? Warren has already reportedly promised nearly a trillion dollar tax increase, spread over ten years, by raising the estate tax, imposing the Buffett Rule, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning $250,000 a year or more. But that money, she has said, would go toward deficit reduction. If Warren really wants to spend $1 trillion a year more on infrastructure, she’d need to eliminate all national defense spending ($705 billion) or all Social Security spending ($730 billion) and then find another more than quarter trillion dollars. Or else she’d have to go on the biggest borrowing or taxing binge in American history.
The feeble mind of Elizabeth Warren rationalizes paying a trillion more on roads and bridges by taxing people more when they die. And libertarians are the less compassionate?
