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Warren Comes Under Fire on Funding for Health Care Plan Warren Draws Fire From All Sides, Reflecting a Shift in Fortunes in Race
(about 2 hours later)
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, an emerging front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, battled sustained criticism from her Democratic rivals over her position on health care in a debate on Tuesday night, squeezed by a combination of moderate and progressive opponents who pressed her to describe in plain terms how she would fund a “Medicare for all”-style system. WESTERVILLE, OHIO — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts faced a sustained barrage of criticism from her Democratic rivals at a presidential debate in Ohio on Tuesday, tangling with a group of underdog moderates who assailed her liberal economic proposals, while former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appeared to fade from the fray after parrying President Trump’s attacks on his family.
Ms. Warren, who has endorsed a proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for single-payer care, has consistently refused to say that she would embrace middle-class tax increases to finance the plan. She maintained that practiced position on the stage in Ohio, vowing that she would lower health care costs for all but the wealthy yet repeatedly sidestepping the question of whether she would enact a broad-based tax increase. The debate confirmed that the primary race had entered a new phase, defined by Ms. Warren’s apparent strength and the increasing willingness of other Democrats to challenge her. She has risen toward the top of the polls while confronting limited resistance from her opponents, and in past debates she attracted a fraction of the hostility that Democrats trained on Mr. Biden.
“I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle-class families,” Ms. Warren said, declining to go into detail. But the answer failed to keep her foes at bay, and for the first time in the race Ms. Warren found herself assailed from multiple sides over an extended period in the debate. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., accused her of evading “a yes-or-no question,” while Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota called the single-payer proposal backed by Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders a “pipe dream.” That changed in a dramatic fashion on Tuesday, when a group of her rivals voiced sharp skepticism of Ms. Warren’s agenda or accused her of taking impractical stances on issues like health care and taxation. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., insistently charged Ms. Warren with evading a “yes-or-no” question on how she would pay for a “Medicare for all” health care system, while Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota cast parts of Ms. Warren’s platform as a “pipe dream.” Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas branded Ms. Warren’s worldview as overly “punitive.”
Ms. Klobuchar reserved her sharpest words, however, for only one of those two progressives. “At least Bernie’s being honest here,” Ms. Klobuchar said, challenging Ms. Warren to tell voters “where we’re going to send the invoice” for single-payer care. Ms. Warren sought at every turn to dispense with her critics by casting them as lacking ambition or political grit. When she addressed criticism of her proposal to tax vast private fortunes, for instance, Ms. Warren suggested her opponents believed it was “more important to protect billionaires than it is to invest in an entire generation” but did not single out her rivals.
Ms. Warren was not alone in facing scrutiny early in the debate: Joseph R. Biden Jr. was quickly pressed on the issue of his son Hunter Biden and his work for a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president. Mr. Biden responded to a question about his son’s overseas work in narrow and repetitive terms, saying several times that he and his son had done “nothing wrong.” The debate unfolded in a drastically altered political landscape, with Mr. Trump facing impeachment and Mr. Biden in the center of a firestorm over his son’s financial overseas financial dealings. The candidates were prompted to cover a wide range of issues, including a number that had featured little or not at all in past debates — not just the impeachment of Mr. Trump, but the Turkish invasion of Syria, and the details of gun control policy and the taxation of great wealth.
The drawn-out argument over health care, in a debate sponsored by CNN and The New York Times, captured one of the defining themes in the Democratic race: the ideological divide over the best way to provide universal coverage, and over the proper scale and cost of government-backed social programs. Up to this point, the Democrats’ policy debate has largely been defined by Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, with their promises to restructure huge parts of the American economy. The debate in Ohio represented the most assertive effort so far by candidates skeptical of their policies to put up resistance to those ideas. The moderators began with a series of questions about impeachment to each of the 12 candidates — the largest field ever for a primary debate — affording them an opportunity to denounce Mr. Trump. And Mr. Biden was quickly asked about his son Hunter Biden’s overseas financial work, delivering a narrow, repetitive answer in which he said neither he nor his son had done anything wrong.
The fierce exchange also signaled that the race had entered a new phase, defined by Ms. Warren’s apparent status as a leader of the Democratic pack and a new mood of urgency among other candidates eager to challenge that status. Foreign policy played a greater role on Tuesday evening than in any other debate, pushed to the political foreground by the renewed outbreak of war and humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. The Democrats chiefly trained their attention on Mr. Trump’s role in instigating the crisis there: For instance, Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, condemned Mr. Trump for “caging kids on the border and letting ISIS prisoners run free” in Syria.
Mr. Sanders, who has observed a kind of informal nonaggression pact with Ms. Warren so far, did not exactly break from that approach on Tuesday night. But he called it “appropriate” for candidates to explain the fiscal trade-offs involved in a “Medicare for all” system: Mr. Sanders said that voters would see their taxes go up, but that they would save money overall because of the way health care would be restructured. With Mr. Biden a diminished force, Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar appeared determined to present themselves as strong alternatives for voters in the middle. Both emphasized their Midwestern credentials, and Mr. Buttigieg invoked his experience as a military veteran in several wide-ranging answers on foreign policy.
“Premiums are gone, co-payments are gone, deductibles are gone, all out-of-pocket expenses are gone,” Mr. Sanders said, adding, “The tax increase they pay will be substantially less, substantially less than what they were paying for premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.” Their new aggressiveness represented a shorter-term calculation about halting Ms. Warren’s increasing strength in Iowa. With Ms. Warren gaining there, Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg plainly decided to target her in an effort to appeal to the state’s moderate voters, who so far have lined up with Mr. Biden.
But Mr. Sanders more forcefully scolded the candidates onstage who opposed single-payer care and whom he described as “defending a system which is dysfunctional, which is cruel.” With a powerfully funded campaign and an expanding field operation in Iowa, Mr. Buttigieg may be uniquely well positioned to assert himself there.
The Democratic field appeared far more eager to attack Ms. Warren for her health care policies than to critique Mr. Biden, who remains a top candidate in the race, for the family business entanglements that have defined a weekslong clash between Mr. Biden and President Trump. In an intense argument that reflected their changing fortunes in the race, Mr. Biden briefly went on the offensive against Ms. Warren toward the end of the debate, describing her health care plans as “vague” and demanding in a raised voice that she give him some credit for her signature accomplishment, the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008 financial crisis. Ms. Warren expressed gratitude for the help she had received — not from Mr. Biden but from former President Barack Obama.
Mr. Biden has tried to put to rest criticism of his son’s financial dealings in Ukraine and China. Over the weekend, he said he would not allow members of his family to do business overseas during a potential Biden presidency, and Hunter Biden stepped down from his role at an investment fund linked to China. But Ms. Warren was on the defensive for much of the evening and most of all on the issue of single-payer health care, when she again declined to specify precisely how she would fund a sweeping system of government-backed insurance. Unlike Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Ms. Warren has not acknowledged in plain terms that a “Medicare for all” plan would quite likely have to substitute broad-based taxes for private insurance premiums and other costs.
Prompted by a moderator to explain why his family had not observed similar restrictions while he was vice president, Mr. Biden avoided answering directly and repeatedly defended his son. He pointed to an interview Hunter Biden gave to ABC News, in which he described his decision to work in Ukraine as an error of judgment but said he had not done anything wrong ethically. “I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle-class families,” Ms. Warren said, declining to elaborate.
“I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine,” the former vice president said, adding, “My son’s statement speaks for itself.” Ms. Klobuchar, in her most assertive debate performance yet, chided Ms. Warren for not explaining to voters “where we’re going to send the invoice” for single-payer care.
The other Democrats onstage did not appear eager to press the issue, in part because they believe there is no appetite among primary voters for criticism of Mr. Biden’s family. There is also a feeling among some Democrats that Mr. Biden is on the downswing in the race and that it makes little sense to attack him in ways that might antagonize his supporters. Neither Ms. Warren nor Mr. Sanders, Mr. Biden’s two most formidable rivals, took up the line of attack on Ukraine. “At least Bernie’s being honest here,” Ms. Klobuchar said.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who in previous debates took on Mr. Biden in pointed terms, instead scolded the moderators for even asking Mr. Biden about his son’s work in Ukraine.
“The only person sitting at home enjoying that was Donald Trump,” said Mr. Booker, lamenting what he called “elevating a lie and attacking a statesman.” Ms. Warren was squeezed, at times, from the left as well: While Mr. Sanders never broke their informal nonaggression pact, he agreed with several of the moderates that it was “appropriate” to enumerate the financial trade-offs involved in single-payer health care, including taxes on Americans that would be “substantially less than what they were paying for premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.”
And while Mr. Sanders, who had a heart attack this month, was forced to address new concerns about his health, his campaign aides confirmed during the debate that he had secured an endorsement from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York that could inject new energy into his candidacy.
But there were also the germs of a broader debate about the role of the United States in the Middle East: In an intense exchange between the two military veterans onstage, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said that it was not only Mr. Trump who had “the blood of the Kurds on his hands,” but also politicians in both parties and news media organizations that had cheered for “regime change war.”
Her remarks drew forceful pushback from Mr. Buttigieg, who said Ms. Gabbard was “dead wrong,” arguing that “the slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence — it is a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values.”
While Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren did not clash directly over foreign policy, they diverged in a stark fashion over the situation in Syria. Mr. Biden said he would want to keep American troops there and convey to the Turkish government that it would pay a “heavy price” for its invasion. Ms. Warren said she opposed Mr. Trump’s handling of the situation but believed the United States should “get out of the Middle East.” (Aides to Ms. Warren said she was referring to the withdrawal of combat troops.)
Throughout the evening, Mr. Biden played a far less central role than he did in past debates, stepping to the foreground for exchanges over foreign policy but otherwise taking a more passive approach. His most important moment of the night may have come early on, when he was pressed by a moderator to explain why his son had not crossed any ethical lines by doing business in Ukraine while his father was overseeing diplomacy there for the Obama administration.
Mr. Biden said several times that he and his son had done “nothing wrong,” and alluded repeatedly to an interview Hunter Biden gave to ABC News, in which he said it had been an error in judgment to sit on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while the elder Mr. Biden was vice president. Mr. Trump has accused the Bidens of corruption, often in false or exaggerated terms, and his efforts to enlist the government of Ukraine in tarring Mr. Biden instigated an impeachment inquiry.
“This is about Trump’s corruption,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s what we should be focusing on.”
None of Mr. Biden’s Democratic rivals chose to press the subject, reflecting both the political sensitivity of issues touching on Mr. Biden’s family and also a calculation, by his most immediate rivals, that Mr. Biden is likely to continue sinking in the race without a further onslaught from fellow Democrats. While a number of candidates are hoping to peel away moderate voters from Mr. Biden, they tried to do so on Tuesday by challenging the left rather than by blasting the leading candidate of the center.
Defending his political stature, Mr. Biden at one point described himself as “the only one on this stage who has gotten anything really big done,” and cited his work on the Violence Against Women Act and the Obama administration’s health care law.
That argument drew a fierce response from Mr. Sanders, who said Mr. Biden had also achieved far less laudable feats, like the passage of the NAFTA trade deal and a law tightening the federal bankruptcy code. “You got the disastrous war in Iraq done,” Mr. Sanders said.
And Ms. Warren, too, took issue with Mr. Biden’s claim, pointing to her role as the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — an agency, she said, that represented “structural change in our economy.” In a moment of crackling tension, Mr. Biden raised his voice and urged Ms. Warren to give him credit, too, for the birth of the agency.
“I went onto the floor and got you votes,” he said.
Ms. Warren retorted by saying she was “deeply grateful for President Obama, who fought so hard to make sure that agency was passed into law,” as well as for others in the administration who did the same.
Just as striking as the offensives by Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg were the more passive showings by Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris — both of whom were counting on a strong outing.
Mr. Booker repeatedly said the focus of the debate should be on Mr. Trump. He denounced the moderators’ questions about Mr. Biden’s son. “The only person sitting at home enjoying that was Donald Trump,” Mr. Booker said.
And he even defended the fitness of the septuagenarian candidates onstage — Mr. Biden, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren — by noting that Mr. Trump would be the least healthy candidate running in 2020. Ms. Harris also mostly trained her fire on the president, at one point using her new catch line: “Dude gotta go.”
The only moment when Ms. Harris showed any appetite for tangling with the other candidates was when she demanded to know why Ms. Warren would not join her in urging Twitter to remove the president’s account.
Ms. Harris seemed more focused on trying to build support with women, as she spoke most forcefully about the importance of defending abortion rights. “It is her body, it is her right, it is her decision,” she said.
After presenting her message at the previous three debates with only intermittent challenges from her rivals, Ms. Warren was met with cutting criticism of her signature populist flourishes.After presenting her message at the previous three debates with only intermittent challenges from her rivals, Ms. Warren was met with cutting criticism of her signature populist flourishes.
“I want to give a reality check to Elizabeth,” said Ms. Klobuchar, before alluding to the hedge fund executive Tom Steyer, one of the 12 candidates onstage. “No one on this stage wants to protect billionaires. Not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires. We just have different approaches.” “I want to give a reality check to Elizabeth,” said Ms. Klobuchar, before alluding to another candidate onstage, the hedge fund executive Tom Steyer. “No one on this stage wants to protect billionaires. Not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires. We just have different approaches.”
Mr. Buttigieg was just as pointed, repeatedly casting Ms. Warren as a “Washington politician,” but he and Ms. Klobuchar were not alone. Even lagging candidates such as former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Andrew Yang, a former tech entrepreneur, took on Ms. Warren, all but confirming her front-runner status. Mr. Buttigieg was just as pointed, repeatedly casting Ms. Warren as a “Washington politician,” but he and Ms. Klobuchar were not alone. Even lagging candidates such as Mr. O’Rourke and Andrew Yang, a former tech entrepreneur, took on Ms. Warren, all but confirming her front-runner status.
Ms. Warren largely refrained from responding to the candidates in personal terms and reaffirmed her progressive message. And while she was eager to articulate her progressive vision here, Ms. Warren seemed just as cognizant that she must broaden her coalition beyond her core base of upscale liberal whites. She repeatedly cited her support for adding funding to historically black colleges and mentioned her brothers, who still live in her native Oklahoma and two of whom are Republicans.
If the two Midwesterners, Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg, displayed a new level of aggressiveness, two other candidates who were at the center of previous debates were invisible for stretches of time. Mr. Biden and Senator Kamala Harris of California seemed to have little appetite to confront Ms. Warren or interject generally. Mr. Sanders was not as ubiquitous a presence as he had been at past debates, but he drew applause by pre-empting a question about his health. “I’m healthy, I’m feeling great,” he said before vowing “a vigorous campaign.”
Mr. Sanders was not as ubiquitous a presence as he had been at past debates, but he drew applause by pre-empting a question about his health, after having a heart attack two weeks ago. “I’m healthy, I’m feeling great,” he said before vowing “a vigorous campaign.”
That, Mr. Sanders said, “is how I think I can reassure the American people.”That, Mr. Sanders said, “is how I think I can reassure the American people.”
Other candidates besides Ms. Warren occasionally found themselves under attack. After weeks of sparring from afar over gun control, Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. O’Rourke clashed heatedly over an issue on which Democrats have sought to outdo one another with far-reaching proposals in the wake of a series of mass shootings.
“I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal,” Mr. Buttigieg said before Mr. O’Rourke could even get off his sharpest criticism about what he said were his rival’s cautious, “poll-tested” proposals on guns.
Mr. Buttigieg has claimed that Mr. O’Rourke’s plan to buy back weapons amounted to “a shiny object” that would only make it harder for Democrats to enact gun control. Brushing aside that criticism, Mr. O’Rourke said the assertion amounted to “a slap in the face” to victims of gun violence and their families.
With a dozen candidates onstage and impeachment in the air, it was unclear heading into Tuesday’s debate whether it would prove to be a turning point in the race. With Mr. Trump’s struggle to stabilize his presidency dominating the news, along with a national security and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Syria, the trading of rhetorical blows on a stage in suburban Ohio may or may not captivate the attention of primary voters across the country this week.
Still, the debate promised to test Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren’s competing claims to the status of Democratic front-runner: The two candidates have been closely matched in recent polling, nationally and in the early primary states, with Ms. Warren assembling an increasingly formidable coalition on the left and Mr. Biden remaining the favorite among more moderate Democrats. In recent weeks, the former vice president has been increasingly critical of Ms. Warren’s vows to overhaul the American economy, and he has spoken dismissively about the idea of electing a “planner” to the presidency — an allusion to Ms. Warren’s swollen sheaf of policy proposals.
They entered the debate battling different vulnerabilities. Mr. Biden has been mired in a nearly monthlong battle with Mr. Trump over the work Mr. Biden’s son did in foreign countries while Mr. Biden was vice president. Mr. Trump’s attacks have veered into personal smears and even potentially impeachable behavior, with entreaties to Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens, but they have left Mr. Biden off balance at a perilous moment in his candidacy.
Up to this point, Ms. Warren has been careful not to allow any daylight to emerge on the health care issue between her and Mr. Sanders, her most formidable populist rival, who has made “Medicare for all” the defining cause of his campaign. But there may now be more pressure on Ms. Warren to revise her stance in a way that might reassure voters on the center-left than there is on her to protect her left flank from Mr. Sanders, who has been fading in the polls and grappling with the aftermath of his heart attack.
Mr. Sanders has been off the campaign trail for nearly all of October, since he was hospitalized in Las Vegas and had two stents placed in an artery. He has been recovering at his home in Burlington, Vt., and announced plans for a comeback tour starting in New York this weekend. But with his advanced age in the spotlight and his poll numbers slowly declining, Mr. Sanders may face a steep climb to overtake either Mr. Biden or Ms. Warren.