I realize I’ve said this before, but if there’s one thing we can conclude about Bernie Sanders that casts him in a positive light, he’s pretty much immune to worrying about doublespeak or hiding his intentions. He’s still pushing his Medicare for All bill (which is co-sponsored by Kamala Harris) and he was asked yet again this week how much it was going to cost. Pretty much without missing a beat, he responded that it was probably going to run in the neighborhood of forty trillion dollars over the first ten years. (Free Beacon)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said on Tuesday that he estimates his Medicare for All plan would cost up to $40 trillion over 10 years. “Somewhere between $30 and $40 trillion over a 10 year period,” Sanders said, contrasting his plan with former vice president Joe Biden, “What the most serious economists tell us, that if we do nothing to fundamentally change the healthcare system, which is what Joe was talking about, keeping it as it is, we’ll be spending something like $50 trillion over a 10 year period.” Sanders has previously said he would raise taxes, including for the middle class, that people would be happy to pay more taxes under his healthcare plan, and that “there will be pain” in a transition to a single-payer system.

Here’s the video of that portion of the interview. The guy is amazingly matter of fact about his numbers.

Forty trillion over ten years is an average of four trillion per year. Does anyone recall what the entire budget of the United States federal government was for 2018? It was 4.094 trillion dollars. So Sanders is casually talking about expending the equivalent of our entire budget on his health care plan. (While simultaneously outlawing private health insurance and wiping out an entire industry.)

But don’t worry. President Sanders will make sure that there’s enough money for it by raising everyone’s taxes, including the middle class. And those taxes are going to have to go up a lot to cover this kind of a bill. Oh, and you won’t have an option of keeping your plan through your employer.

At the same time, Kamala Harris did another interview with CNN on this subject. They’ve been running clips of it all morning. She’s flip-flopped on whether or not she would eliminate private health insurance so many times she’s getting invitations to try out for the Olympic gymnast team, but now her answer has changed again. She said, “Those with private health insurance would eventually be covered by Medicare for All, but people will be able to keep their doctor.”

Where have we heard that one before? I’m pretty sure that qualified for the Lie of the Year award at one point. The Democrats are proudly stating that they’re “willing to run on health care in 2020.” What they’re really running on is running it into the ground.