Cory Booker in Vox Media


On Health Care: Ok to consider single-payer, but I'm not behind it

During Barack Obama's presidency, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) could only find 62 other House Democrats willing to co-sponsor his single-payer health care proposal--which would expand Medicare to cover every American. But now that Speaker Paul Ryan's House health care bill has imploded, Conyers's team has already signed up 78 co-sponsors for the exact same single-payer bill. And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced over the weekend he'd be launching a new Medicare-for-All initiative.

But while Sanders and progressive Democrats clamor for a more aggressive approach, some Senate Democrats expressed skepticism about the need to go that far, that quickly. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) wouldn't get behind a single-payer health care system, instead calling it "one of those options that must be considered" in an email to Vox.

Source: Jeff Stein in Vox.com, "TrumpCare dead" Mar 29, 2017

On Welfare & Poverty: HOME Act: $134 billion a year via EITC for people in poverty

Cory Booker's HOME (Housing, Opportunity, Mobility, and Equity) Act is a massive expansion of the EITC, which provides supplemental cash to low-income people who work. The HOME Act (estimated cost $134 billion a year) would provide a refundable credit to people paying more than 30% of their income in rent. The credit would be worth the difference between their year's rent (capped at the area fair-market rent) and 30% of their income. The fair market rent requirement prevents the credit from going to luxury renters.

[A similar bill by presidential rival Kamala Harris], the Middle Class Act and Rent Relief Act, would cost $93 billion a year and provide $42 billion to people in poverty. Booker's HOME Act, which costs significantly more per year than Harris's rental bill, accordingly provides $51.9 billion to households in poverty.

Source: Vox.com,"5 anti-poverty plans" by 2020 presidential hopefuls Jan 30, 2019

The above quotations are from Vox Media (news website).
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Page last updated: Dec 02, 2023