How will Democrats pay for their promises?

The Democratic candidates for the presidency want to provide free college to everyone. This would amount to over $70 billion based on today's enrollment of about 45 million students and average costs at public and private universities that is not currently being paid by government grants. To pay for this $70 billion in increased government spending taxes would have to increase by an average $5,000 for each of the 141 million taxpayers in the USA. This does not even take into account forgiveness of all student loan debt, which also has been proposed by some of the candidates.

In addition, all of the Democratic presidential candidates want to provide free Medicare to everyone including noncitizens. Currently there are 44 million people, 15% of our total population, on Medicare at an annual cost of $582 billion. Medicare beneficiaries and their employers paid into the Medicare fund throughout their working lives and pay a monthly premium of $110 to $125. Yet, the system is forecast to go bankrupt in 2026 … just seven years from now. So, how are we going to be able to afford providing free Medicare coverage to six times as many people and even increase benefits when the current system is already going broke?

This would be an estimated total cost of around $3.5 trillion per year.

I would like to hear how the Democratic hopefuls are going to pay for both of these programs without huge increases in taxes for American citizens.

John Noll

Naperville