At the debate, Warren and Sanders split with Biden over whether to chip away at the fortunes of the richest Americans through a wealth tax, one of the fault lines dividing the party’s mainstream party from its ascendant left flank.
Biden, the only top-polling candidate who hasn’t said he’d consider a wealth tax, instead pitched raising the top rate on capital gains income to nearly 40%. He rejected the idea that wealth taxes “demonize” rich Americans, saying merely that the idea isn’t realistic. “What I talk about is how to get things done,” he said.
Biden also made a few gaffes in the exchange. He first slipped and said he would eliminate the capital gains tax, rather than raise it. He then asked, cryptically, “why in God’s name should someone who is clipping coupons in the stock market” pay a lower tax than a teacher or a firefighter. It wasn’t clear what he meant: Securities for publicly traded companies don’t have coupons redeemable.
Trade Takes Center Stage
The candidates came out swinging against Trump’s trade policies with more force than in past debates, days after the White House announced a partial pact with China and as the administration struggles to get support for a new deal with Canada and Mexico.
Both O’Rourke and Booker attacked Trump for negotiating trade deals that don’t put workers first. That issue is at the heart of Democrats’ concerns with the new Nafta trade agreement -- known as USMCA -- and a key reason why Congress hasn’t yet passed it.
“Making sure that if we trade with Mexico, Mexican workers are allowed to join unions, which they’re effectively unable to do today,” O’Rourke said at the debate in Ohio. “Not only is that bad for the Mexican worker, it puts the American worker at a competitive disadvantage.”
Democrats have been working with Trump’s trade chief Robert Lighthizer to get Mexico to improve its labor-reform law before American lawmakers move forward with a vote. Lighthizer is also closely working with labor leaders in the U.S., with the goal of getting unions to support it or at least not publicly oppose the deal.
Imagine There’s No Pentagon
Biden found an image to show how hard it would be to pay the estimated $30 trillion price tag for Medicare For All: even doing away with the Pentagon would not be enough to cover the cost.
“If you eliminate the entire Pentagon — planes, ships, troops, the building, everything, satellites — it gets you a total of four months. Where do you get the rest?” Biden asked as he stood between Warren and Sanders, the two advocates of Medicare for All.
Biden went after his progressive rivals for failing to explain how they would fund their health care plans and pitched his plan to improve the health care system with a public option. Sanders responded that Biden’s proposal wouldn’t curb on the “greed and the profiteering” in the health insurance industry.