FEAR OF A MASSIVE MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUT:

The M4A Financing Problem, in simple terms, is that even if you bring in existing federal spending on health care, existing state spending on health care, and a bunch of new rich-people taxes, you still fall short of financing the program. Thus, to actually complete the financing, you have to use some middle-class taxes.

The proper response to this "problem" has always been to point out that it is no problem at all. Yes, you will have to impose some middle-class taxes to round out the total amount of money you need, but those taxes will charge the middle class far less than they are currently paying for health care. What people don't like about taxes is that it means they have less money. But swapping these taxes for the elimination of premiums and out-of-pocket expenses would actually mean that the middle class has a lot more money.

However, for some pundits, this explanation has never been satisfactory. They say that any tax imposed on the middle class is a problem and has to be avoided. And, insofar as you cannot do M4A without some middle-class taxes, it is a nonstarter.

When Warren released her Medicare-for-All financing proposal this week, nearly every left-liberal journalist declared she had made a huge breakthrough: an M4A financing plan with no middle-class taxes.

David Dayen of the American Prospect announced that "Warren's Medicare for All Plan Includes No New Taxes on the Middle Class." Sahil Kapur says that, contrary to Bernie Sanders, Warren's plan has "no middle class taxes." Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR says Warren's plan has "no new taxes on the middle class." Ady Barkan of the Intercept writes that "her plan doesn't raise taxes on working families." Even Eric Levitz of New York magazine, who seems to know better in parts of his piece, says that the plan "does not raise the American middle class's taxes by a dime."

Every single one of these people is incorrect, under the typical definition of "middle-class taxes" that has always been used in this discussion. Just like every person that came before her, Warren realized that after bringing in existing government spending and some targeted rich-people taxes, there was still more money that needed to be collected. And, just like those people, she came up with a middle-class tax to do it. Her middle-class tax is an employer-side head tax. It is an $8.8 trillion tax hike on the middle class.

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