The Sanders Fantasy

Feb. 12, 2016

Democrats agog over Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid might want to hone their math skills.

Sanders, the former socialist turned independent turned Democrat, has converted left-leaning anger over Wall Street abuses and income inequality into support much like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have done with anger on the right.

The Sanders campaign platform emphasizes four issues; break up and re-regulate big banks and Wall Street, rebuild the country’s infrastructure, create free public college for all and dramatically expand Medicare into a cradle-to-grave single-payer healthcare system.

There are costs associated with these plans, somewhere between $10 trillion and $18 trillion over the next decade depending on whose numbers you believe. Sanders and his supporters are quick to point out this isn’t additional or new spending but spending in place of what is already being spent. Or at least some of it is.

He intends to pay for this by increasing estate taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, transaction taxes, value added taxes, payroll taxes, income taxes and new taxes on brokerage houses and hedge fund managers. And, as every president for the last five decades has promised, he’s going to clean up waste and fraud in Medicare. His campaign claims the net result for low and middle income Americans will either be neutral or a small gain. Others believe differently.

Let’s assume these are all worthwhile ideas he was unable to further during his quarter century in Washington but somehow now can pencil out. Instead of the economics of it all, let’s examine the politics, where the work of Sanders’ proposals will be conducted.

Sanders’ plans require spending bills that have to be introduced in the House of Representatives, pass trough committee assignments, gain approval of the entire body, and move over to the Senate.

The House currently has 246 Republicans and 188 Democrats with one vacancy. Passing legislation requires 218 votes. Research can find no evidence that any Republican House member supports any tax increase of any kind. In fact, 95% of House Republicans have signed a no-new-taxes pledge.

That means for Sanders’ proposals to get by their first hurdle, Democrats will have to retake control of the House by gaining a whopping 30 seats.

Thanks to the gerrymandered redistricting of both Republican and Democrat legislatures, there are only 30-35 House seats in the entire country that are truly competitive. Picking up 30 seats would require Sanders to win in an overwhelming landslide with coattails both wide and long. You probably have a better chance of winning the next Powerball.

But let’s assume President-Elect Sanders has pulled in 30 new Democrat House members ready to support him. Now we move to the Senate, which is a little bit trickier.

The Senate currently has 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats and two independents. Both independents caucus with the Democrats so we’ll make the divide 54-46. Again, nearly all the Republicans have signed the no-new-taxes pledge and none have publicly indicated any support for tax increases. So Democrats will also have to take control of the Senate.

But a simple majority of 51 won’t be enough. Senate members invoke the threat of a filibuster to derail legislation they don’t like. To halt a filibuster and force an actual vote, a process called cloture, requires 60 votes.

Now comes the math. There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs in 2016. Of those, 21 are held by Republican incumbents running for reelection and three Republicans are retiring leaving an open seat. Seven incumbent Democrats are running for reelection while three Democrats are retiring leaving open seats.

Democrats will have to win 24 of those 34 contests to get to 60 seats. Now look at a map of states holding 2016 senate elections and ask yourself if there are 24 Democrat wins in there somewhere. The reality is the Democrats will be extremely lucky to win back a simple majority; 60 seats is a political impossibility.

A single-payer healthcare system with its economies of scale and negotiated contracts might be cheaper. Most everyone seems to agree we need to get busy on repairing our crumbling infrastructure. Free college is an interesting idea that, at the very least, has made Sanders very popular on college campuses.

But all the reforming, refiguring and taxing the rich will be nowhere near enough to pay for Sanders’ initiatives. That means Republicans, whose mantra has been “lower taxes, less government” for years, would have to support more of both. They won’t.

This is the elephant in Sanders’ campaign war room; there is no conceivable way he can enact any of the major proposals he currently advances. None. His platform is somewhere between fantasy and delusion, a gauzy dream from which his supporters can’t seem to wake up.

The Sandersnistas, or whatever they call themselves, desperately need a Plan B because their Plan A is simply impossible.