Klobuchar Slams Warren for Refusing to Say if She Will Have to Raise Taxes

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) slammed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for not specifying how much she would increase income taxes for the middle class to pay for a government-run single-payer health care system.

“At least Bernie’s being honest here and saying how he’s going to pay for this and that taxes are going to go up. And I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but you have not said that, and I think we owe it to the American people to tell them where we’re going to send the invoice,” she said during the presidential debate on Tuesday evening in Ohio.

“I believe the best and boldest idea here is to not trash Obamacare but to do exactly what Barack Obama wanted to do from the beginning and that’s have a public option that would bring down the cost of the premiums and expand the number of people covered and take on the pharmaceutical companies. That is what we should be doing instead of kicking 149 million people off their insurance in four years,” she added.

Klobuchar continued, “And I’m tired of hearing, whenever I say these things, ‘oh, it’s Republican talking points.’ You are making Republican talking points right now in this room by coming out for a plan that’s going to do that. I think there is a better way that is bold, that will cover more people, and it’s the one we should get behind.”

In response, Warren said she didn’t spend most of her life in Washington.

“I spent most of my time studying one basic question, and that is why hardworking people go broke. And one of the principal reasons for that is the cost of health care and back when I was studying it, two out of every three families that ended up in bankruptcy after a serious medical problem had health insurance. The problem we’ve got right now is the overall cost of health care,” she said.

“Look, you can try to spin this any way you want. I’ve spent my entire life working on how America’s middle class has been hollowed out and how we fight back. I’ve put out nearly 50 plans on how we can fight back and how we can rebuild an America that works. And a part of that is we have got to stop Americans from going bankrupt over health care costs,” she added.