Kamala Harris Dodges Question About Price Tag Of Dem Agenda: “It’s Not About A Cost” (VIDEO)

CNN’s John King recently asked Kamala Harris about the Democrats’ 2020 agenda, specifically how it would be paid for. He noted the astronomical numbers involved but she would not be specific. In fact, she skirted right around the issue and didn’t give a straight answer.

Here’s a transcript via CNN:

KING: What do you say or tell me if you think this is fair. That as you talk to Democratic voters, they’re hungry and they want ideas. And so you’ll hear things like the Green New Deal.

HARRIS: Yes.

KING: You’ll hear things like Medicare for all. You’ll hear things like, y, whether it’s taxes, you’ll hear things —

HARRIS: Right.

KING: — at what point do you say that’s our north star but we have to be realists?

HARRIS: There’s no question we have to be practical. But being practical also recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to us as human beings. Being practical recognizes that greenhouse gas emissions are threatening our air and threatening the planet and that it is well within our capacity as human beings to change our behaviors in a way that we can reduce its effects. That’s practical.

KING: Can we afford it?

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HARRIS: Of course we can afford it.

KING: $2.5 trillion, $3 trillion a year for Medicare for all by some studies. I don’t — depending on which portions of the Green New Deal you pick to do first — that’s money. You know what the Republicans are going to say — tax and spend liberals, pie in the sky.

HARRIS: One of the things that I admire and respect is the measurement that is captured in three letters, ROI. What’s the return on the investment? People in the private sector understand this really well. It’s not about a cost. It’s about an investment.

And then the question should be, is it worth the cost in terms of the investment potential? Are we going to get back more than we put in?

Watch the video:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) repeatedly failed to give CNN’s John King a clear answer on how she would pay for her proposals, saying, “it’s not about a cost.” pic.twitter.com/w8UHy10heg

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 24, 2019

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has some thoughts on this:

Ahem. This “investment” spin might work if we weren’t already borrowing 40 cents on every dollar the federal government spends. The national debt just ticked past $22 trillion, and it’s accelerating towards $23 trillion. We spend almost as much on interest payments on our debt each year as we spend on the Department of Defense, plus we have hundreds of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities from our “investments” in Medicare and Social Security which are about to come due.

Not only can we not afford the “investment,” we can’t afford the economic disruption that would come from either M4A or the GND, and especially not both together. We need our economy to grow rapidly to keep pace with the debt we’re amassing. A slowdown would put us in serious danger of default. If we’re looking for an investment, it should be in structural reform of the budget and our entitlement programs. Fixing those and ending deficit spending might leave us some room for other investments down the road. For now, we’ve “invested” ourselves into near-bankruptcy.

When is someone in the media going to press her or any of these Democrats for specifics?

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