Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, host Hugh Hewitt interview former Rep. John Delaney (D-MD), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
During the first round of the Democratic presidential debates on Wednesday, Delaney expressed his reservations about a Medicare for All policy proposal, which he told Hewitt would cost $33 trillion over the next decade, which is a figure backed up by economists.
Partial transcript as follows:
HEWITT: John Delaney just joins us now. Congressman, how are you?
DELANEY: Good, Hugh. How are you doing?
HEWITT: I’m great. Thank you for saving my Blue Cross.
DELANEY: Yeah.
HEWITT: I do not want my Blue Cross to be taken away. It’s worked well, and I’m a union member by the way, AFTRA-SAG. And I don’t want AFTRA-SAG benefits to go away, either. Did you get some applause from the union people out there?
DELANEY: I did. Yeah, I mean, look. It’s just about choices. The American people want choices. And they ought to have them. It’s also about economics, as you know.
HEWITT: What would Medicare, yeah, what would Medicare for all cost?
DELANEY: $33 trillion dollars.
HEWITT: Wow.
DELANEY: I know. It kind of takes your breath away a little bit, doesn’t it?
HEWITT: Well, does anyone in your party understand that’s not tenable? That’s 150% of the national debt.
DELANEY: Right, listen, I don’t think, that’s a detail that a lot of people don’t focus on. You know, as I said the other night, we have to be the party that has workable solutions. We’ve got to tell people how we’re going to pay for them. And then we have to tell people how we’re going to get it done politically, right? That should be our jobs. And you know, what’s different about me is for everything I’ve proposed, I explain why it’s workable. People can disagree, but I have an opinion as to why it’s workable. I tell people how I’m going to pay for it. And I lay out how I think I can get it done politically, which as you know is incredibly hard for any of this stuff.
HEWITT: As the framers intended it to be.
DELANEY: Exactly.
HEWITT: There’s supposed to be a deliberative…it’s just the way it’s supposed to work. Now Congressman…
DELANEY: I think if they came back and saw us today, they would say well, it took you a little too long to do a few things, but fundamentally, your freedom and liberty has been protected.
HEWITT: Yes.
DELANEY: And they’d be okay with that.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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