AOC says Bernie Sanders WOULD compromise on Medicare-for-All if he is elected and can’t get Democrats in Congress to back it saying she’d accept the ‘public option’ pushed by other candidates
- Medicar-for-All proposals have provided some of the sharpest splits between Democratic presidential candidates
- Rivals have blasted Sanders for a multi-trillion plan for its cost and pointed to polls that most Americans want to keep their insurance
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said a president can’t wave a ‘magic wand’
- The idea doesn’t currently have majority support in the House, and is far short of 60-vote threshold in the Senate
- AOC mentioned ‘worst case’ compromise of settling for a public option added to Obamacare
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested that a President Bernie Sanders would compromise on Medicare-for-All, one of the top issues that separates him from the more moderate Democratic hopefuls.
‘A president can’t wave a magic wand and pass any legislation they want,’ the New York Democrat and Sanders supporter told HuffPost this week, adding that she thought voters realized the reality of there begin an ‘inherent check’ on the president’s power called Congress.
But with a Republicans in the Senate pulling the country to the right, AOC argued that Democrats should pick a lefty to counterweight their actions.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) told HuffPost this week that Sen. Bernie Sanders (right) would compromise on Medicare-for-All if he was blocked by a right-leaning Congress as president
‘The worst case scenario?’ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the news site. ‘We compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option,’ she said
Sen. Bernie Sanders (right) has come under attack by other Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden (left), for not budging on wanting to pass Medicare-for-All
‘The worst case scenario?’ she mused. ‘We compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option,’ she said.
‘Is that a nightmare? I don’t think so,’ the freshman congresswoman added.
Sanders’ unwavering support for Medicare-for-All has been used to characterize him as being out of touch or extreme.
But it’s also helped him attract such a following that he now looks like the frontrunner for the nomination.
He was helped by Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement, which came the same night he returned to the Democratic debate stage following recovery from a heart attack.
Since then, AOC has campaigned for the senator in her hometown of New York, as well as Iowa, California and Nevada.
She opened for the senator on Monday night at his final New Hampshire rally before the next night’s primary, which Sanders won.
There, she opined that the 78-year-old Sanders represented the future.
‘There are two paths we can take – one is a nomination that brings us back to business as usual, but business as usual was not working for working people,’ she said on the campus of the University of New Hampshire. ‘Or we can choose to move forward.’
‘And as someone who has been told to go back, I’m going to tell you, we’re moving forward,’ she shouted, with the crowd cheering back.
Ocasio-Cortez included Medicare-for-All in her definition of ‘forward.’
‘Forward to a multi-racial democracy, forward to guaranteed healthcare, forward to a living wage, forward to fighting for our neighbors, forward for indigenous rights and honoring sovereignty. Forward! Forward! Forward! That’s where we’re going to go,’ she yelled.
‘We’re not going back to the days where people had to hide, we’re not going back to the days where people had to worry, we’re not going back to the days where people had to worry – we’re not going back, we’re going to forward,’ she continued.
‘And with that, I am so excited to bring you the candidate that will get us there,’ she said. ‘Senator Bernard Sanders!’