It’s the job of journalists to scrutinize candidates’ ideas and explain to voters what might be in store if each one is elected. Unfortunately, the way too many of us in the media go about it does more to obscure what’s important than to clarify it. Questions that seem tough-minded and probing in fact distract us from what we ought to be asking.
Let’s take the interview Harris did on “60 Minutes” on Monday. Correspondent Bill Whitaker listed a series of proposals Harris has made — increasing the child tax credit, giving tax breaks to first-time home buyers and those starting small businesses — then noted that a think tank had estimated that they would add significantly to the deficit. “How are you gonna pay for that?” Whitaker asked. When she didn’t answer the question directly, he asked it again, then expressed skepticism at the idea that she could get her plan through Congress. That was as far as the discussion went.
We should start by asking whether or not a proposal is an important priority for the country.
When it comes to policies like the ones Whitaker brought up, or Harris’ new proposal to have Medicare pay for at-home care for seniors, there is a series of questions we in the media ought to ask. The first is: Why is this issue a priority? After that, we can ask: How would this proposal address the problem more effectively than other proposals? And once we’ve answered those questions, we can ask: Where will we get the money?
The first two questions allow us to consider our values, our priorities and the kind of society we want to construct. Skipping right to “How are you gonna pay for that” avoids those issues. Focusing only on a plan’s cost or worse, its hypothetical prospects in a future Congress, too often ducks those fundamental questions.
That’s why there’s nothing wrong with Harris going less often to the elite news media to discuss these ideas, and spending more of her time both on TV shows like “The View” — where she debuted the at-home care idea — and on popular podcasts and radio shows. In those forums, she has the chance to talk about why we ought to do what she’s suggesting, without being interrupted with questions about getting a bill out of the subcommittee on health and human services.
That might be an important question but probably not in a presidential campaign, and before we even know who will control either house of Congress. There will be time once a bill begins moving through the legislative process to consider cost estimates and vote trading, but perhaps now we should start by asking whether or not a proposal is an important priority for the country.
That is a worthwhile debate you can actually have during a presidential campaign: How much of a problem is the affordability of long-term care for seniors? And if the answer is that it’s a huge problem (which it is), then we can ask what is the best way to address it.
We shouldn’t forget that when it comes to government spending, we always pay for what we want. Cost can be part of that discussion, but we shouldn’t forget that when it comes to government spending, we always pay for what we want — the question is whether we want something badly enough to pay for it. In this case, a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution put the cost of something like what Harris is proposing at a minimum of $40 billion a year. That’s a lot of money, but it’s also far less than we spend on many other ideas, both good and bad. When there’s a new expenditure we decide is urgent, we just do it, regardless of what it costs. We spent trillions to counteract the economic effects of the Covid pandemic because we thought it was important; that was the right thing to do, and it helped the U.S. economy recover more quickly and completely than our peer countries. We also spent trillions of dollars on a needless war in Iraq, but that was a terrible idea even if it had cost nothing. Political and fiscal questions are important. But the presidential campaign is best suited to addressing basic questions of a country’s values and priorities. It’s fair to be skeptical about Harris’ home-care plan, since it would be a significant and expensive new program. But a great deal will depend on its specific design and the political realities it will confront, which we won’t know until she’s president and turns it into legislation. At this stage, “How are you going to pay for it?” is a gotcha question, meant not to explore the idea in detail, but to put her on the defensive. Let’s spend our time asking what we as a nation want for our future. We’ll have plenty of time to worry about the dollars and cents later.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
