Delaney Calls Green New Deal ‘Impossible,’ Medicare For All ‘Dangerous’

John Delaney called the Green New Deal “impossible,” Medicare For All “dangerous,” and went after some of his fellow Democrats for being too soft on immigration during a campaign stop in Panora Saturday afternoon.

The Democrat made it clear he wants to be the middle-of-the-road candidate who can defeat President Donald Trump next year.

Delaney spent more than an hour answering questions from two dozen people gathered at a clubhouse at the Lake Panorama Golf Course.

He was engaged in a discussion about his healthcare plan when questioners started to say they weren’t worried about Medicare For All because it’s they felt it was a concept that’ll fizzle out eventually.

“I think your answer is right about the Green New Deal, which is kind of an amorphous concept,” Delaney said. “It’s kind of a resolution … In general, it sets aspirational goals. Medicare For All is not that.”

“Medicare For All is a very specific piece of legislation Bernie Sanders has had in the Senate for a long time,” Delaney continued. “And what I think is tragic, a bunch of people — Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris — they’ve effectively outsourced their health care to him.”

“You go on all of their websites, they don’t have health care. They have Medicare for All,” Delaney said. “And it means something very specific. It’s a massive bill with lots of details. It has in section 102, the first sentence says ‘private insurance will be illegal.’ Right there in the bill … I think Medicare For All, I think it’s dangerous. I really do. It’s never going to happen.”

He claimed that only 12 percent of Americans think eliminating private insurance is a good idea.

“This is like a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up in the Democrats’ face,” Delaney said. “None of the Democrats are willing to say what I was willing to say. But you know who will be very comfortable saying it? Donald Trump. And he’ll spend a billion dollars to say it. He’ll scare everyone.”

As for the Green New Deal, Delaney said his fellow Democrats are over-simplifying things to appease an audience on Twitter.

“What they say in the Green New Deal is we have to get off fossil fuels in 12 years. I’ll tell you something that’s not going to make me popular,” Delaney said. “That is impossible. Eighty percent of our energy right now comes from fossil fuels.”

“That’s just a cold, hard reality,” Delaney added. “I think we can get off fossil fuels by 2050, but not by 2030. And even by 2050 it’s going to be hard.”

Audience members in the mostly-Republican county also asked Delaney about his immigration plan. Specifically, they asked, how he would protect the country’s borders.

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“If you listened to the debate the other night, some of the candidates were arguing for making crossing the border not a crime,” Delaney said. “The conditions when people cross the border have to be humane. And we have to respect human dignity. And we shouldn’t do things like separate children from their families, obviously … But that doesn’t mean we should then get to the point of saying anyone can come into our country at any time without going through a legal immigration process. I think we’ve got to be careful as a party because there were some people calling for that on stage the other night.”

Delaney also made his case on why he wants to be the more centrist candidate.

He said there’s a large group of people in America who don’t like Trump, but still need a realistic alternative to vote for.

“They think he’s indecent, but they don’t mind his policies,” Delaney said. “Those people are persuadable. You can get them. But you have to put up a candidate who is decent, right? Who has a fundamental sense of morality about them. Because they don’t like that about Trump. They’re not proud to have him as their president.”

“But the person has to talk with common sense and run on ideas that make sense, that actually matter to people.”

by Paige Godden
Posted 6/29/19