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Edwards admits his big ideas are costly
Says plans take precedence over eliminating deficit, middle-class tax relief
 | Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards addresses the Women Employed's luncheon in Chicago May 9. |
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP |
 | Interactive |
 | NBC News |
WASHINGTON - Presidential candidate John Edwards is offering more policy proposals than any other candidate in the primary and his ideas are winning loud applause from Democratic audiences. The question is whether other voters will cheer when they see the price tag - more than $125 billion a year.
Edwards is quick to acknowledge his spending on health care, energy and poverty reduction comes at a cost, with more plans to come. All told, his proposals would equal more than $1 trillion if he could get them enacted into law and operational during two White House terms.
To put the number in perspective, President Bush has dedicated more than $1.8 trillion to tax cuts. The cost of the Iraq war is nearing $450 billion. And this year's federal budget is about $2.8 trillion.
Health care over tax relief
Edwards says fixing the country's problems takes precedence over eliminating the deficit or offering middle-class tax relief like he proposed when running for president in the last election.
"I think for me, as opposed to the additional tax relief for the middle class, what's more important is to give them relief from the extraordinary cost of health care, from gasoline prices, the things that they spend money on every single day that are escalating dramatically," Edwards said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
To pay for some of his priorities, Edwards would roll back Bush's tax cuts on Americans making more than $200,000 a year. He also said he would consider raising capital gains taxes to help fund his plans and raise or eliminate the $90,000 cap on individual earnings subject to Social Security taxes to help cover the projected shortfall in the system.
'Tax and spend' label
Edwards also has proposed spending cuts such as cutting subsidies for the banks that make student loans for a savings of $6 billion a year. He would also save money by trimming the number of Department of Housing and Urban Development employees, negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices and cutting agricultural subsidies for corporate farms, although the campaign did not yet have estimates of how much that would bring in.
Edwards' ideas have already opened him to accusations of being just another tax-and-spend liberal, a label put on Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee who said he would raise taxes and then lost 49 states to President Reagan.
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The Republican National Committee accused Edwards of making his first campaign promise to raise taxes. "Edwards' America Will Pay More Taxes," said a news release from the conservative Club for Growth on the day Edwards announced a plan for universal health care that would cost $90 billion to $120 billion.
The cost estimate came from Ken Thorpe, an Emory University researcher who provides outside analysis on health care plans for presidential candidates. The estimate he gave the Edwards campaign was $105 billion to $145 billion in 2010 dollars - the year Edwards' plan would go into full effect. However, the campaign changed it to 2007 dollars.
His plan would require employers to provide insurance or contribute to the coverage of every worker - and it would require every citizen to get coverage. The government would pay for insurance for lower income Americans and tax credits to help subsidize what other families would have to pay for coverage, funded by abolishing Bush's tax cuts for people who make more than $200,000 a year and by having the government collect more back taxes.
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