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[–] 74 points 2 days ago (10 children)

Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?

No because that would have been done through normal policy change and actually a thing an elected official should try and do. What Trump is doing (even if it is a lie) is bribery. It's not even remotely the same, and it speaks volumes of your character that you would even try and equate them.

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  • [+] -62 points 2 days ago* (9 children)

    Trump's and Bernie's plans would both require congress because the president literally has no access to funds without it.

    I worry about people spreading these lies because it is in fact a great policy stance.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (6 children)

    If it's a great policy stance, they should do it now when they know they have control of both legislatures. Why wait?

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  • [–] -2 points 1 day ago (5 children)
  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago (4 children)

    So you think promising money he'll never give out is a "great policy stance"? Huh???

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago (3 children)

    giving out money is a great policy

    voting for Trump or believing anything he says is idiocy

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  • [–] 0 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

    Right, so what they're doing is not a great policy stance, contrary to what you said earlier.

    Bernie didn't have the power to deliver on his promises without winning the election, Trump already won and has control of all three branches. It's objectively massively different to Bernie, or any other office-seeking politician, running on a platform of what they would try to do once elected. It's the difference between, "Here's what I'll try to accomplish if I win," and "Here's something I could do now but I won't, I'll only do it later and only if you vote how I say." I'd argue it's closer to extortion than a bribe, but no matter what you call it, it's a terrible, evil policy stance.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago (1 child)

    Look, if Trump campaigned tomorrow that he would uncap the house and end exceptions to the antislavery ammendment, I'd call all of you motherfuckers as you are for repeating his lies.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Your suposition is that the power of the purse still applies here. Trump has operated the executive as a collective slush fund, many times using horrible arguments that fail in court and then proceeding anyways. Also he's allocated money from military coup projects like Venezuala to funds not under congressional control illegally.

    Bernies plan is to first expand Medicare to all ages. Going off Trump's logic this would be done by directing CMS by executive order to adjust the rates, the treasury department to allocate the necessary trust fund expenditures, the IRS to apply the necessary taxes, and the justice department to aggressively target every single possible violation in the private health insurance industry. Bernie's actual plan is to use the bully pulpit as intended to pressure congress to act in accordance with those changes ahead of time, completely different. That's because Trump moves to erode government into the pockets of the rich and Bernie seeks to build it stronger to benefit everyone. Executive overreach expansion has only been applied to benefit the rich effectively where everywhere else it had failed.

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  • [+] -10 points 1 day ago*

    The DHS and especially ICE also lost funding and shut down a lot of offices for over a month until the GOP passed a reconciliation bill.

    Even if overreach is occuring he is not going to pull 1.5 Trillion Dollars out of his ass.

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