This year, elections will show if the United States will either see a new president in the White House or see the continuation of Donald Trump’s presidency. Given that Marin is a liberal county, many students at Redwood High School would love to see a well-rounded democratic president take office. Bernie Sanders, now a former presidential candidate, after recently dropping out of the race, does not fit this description. His socialist ideologies would have created tremendous controversy in the United States if he was elected to be the President.
On April 8, Sanders officially declared he was dropping out of the presidential race. During Sanders’ announcement of his departure from the presidential race, he explained why he was bringing his campaign to a halt.
“I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour,” Sanders stated.
Following this statement, Sanders decided to endorse Joe Biden, a fellow democratic presidential candidate, for president.
“We need [Biden] in the White House. I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” Sanders said.
Sanders is currently focused on helping Joe Biden win the presidential election in any way he can. However, this is just a part of his main priority: removing Donald Trump from the White House. Although this is Sanders’ main goal, he could not complete it himself due to his extreme ideas which were unpopular among many.
Sanders proposed many far-left reforms that would have drastically changed the United States. With such costly reforms, Sanders would have been forced to collect dramatically increased taxes from American citizens. One alteration that Sanders put forth was offering free tuition for all public colleges and trade schools. According to “Senator Sanders’ College for All Act,” the total tuition of public colleges amounts to $70 billion, annually. Sanders also promised that he would cancel all student loan debt during his presidency. That by itself is $1.6 trillion, according to Forbes. America is already $23 trillion in debt. It would not be financially reasonable to add another $1.6 trillion to the government’s debt as well as a yearly $70 billion bill. With his goals, Sanders is asking the United States to completely overextend financially.
As well as implementing free college tuition in the United States education system and canceling all student loan debt, Sanders wanted to replace private health insurance companies and establish a government-run healthcare system.
The Americans for Tax Reform Organization made an estimate of the cost of Sanders’ healthcare proposal over the next decade.
“The proposal increases taxes by $14.3 trillion over the next decade,” said the Americans for Tax Reform Organization on April 10, 2019. This massive tax increase would have come from Sanders’ healthcare reform alone.
Sanders planned to raise the top marginal income tax rate from 37 percent to 52 percent. This was more extreme than the tax increases proposed by some of the other democratic candidates. For example, Biden plans to change the top marginal income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. Obviously, many American citizens would not have approved the idea of a 15 percent increase in the top marginal income tax rate in the United States, including some Democrats. This is one of the reasons Sanders decided to abandon his campaign.
Sanders’ socialist ideologies and policies stirred great concern in many Americans. Citizens across America began to believe the far-left candidate was not fit for the presidency. Consequently, Sanders has now decided to discontinue his persistent journey for the presidency because he no longer felt optimistic about the outcome of his campaign. Now, Sanders is concentrating on assisting Biden in the battle for the presidency. Maybe he should have been doing this from the start as it is clear that his far-left, socialist ideas are far too unpopular among American citizens.