the correct answer to the question of "how do we pay for this?" is that the answer is incoherent - government doesn't pay for things, it funds them by creating as much money as it wants. you can't actually answer the question, because it doesn't actually make any sense - which is why so many people get stumped by it. rather, it's an opportunity to teach the questioner a little bit about how government creates and distributes money.

"how are those squirrels going to save enough red meat to last them through the winter?"

there is actually no reason that you can't cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy and pay for universal health care at the same time. the debt produced by the budget deficits that would result from creating this money would merely be an accounting note: we created this much money to pay for that.

"repaying this debt" would mean collecting the money that was created and destroying it. you're not repaying anybody, you're just destroying the money - which, nowadays, means little more than changing a number on a screen.

repaying government debt is quite literally the destruction of public wealth. broadly speaking, it's a bad thing that should be avoided and vigorously fought against.

there are other reasons why we might want to increase taxes on the rich, specifically at the subnational level. a state or provincial or municipal government has to borrow money like any other entity. we may have a moral problem with runaway inequality. and, there are reasons why we might want to prevent the money supply from expanding out of control.

but, the idea that you fund public spending with tax money is completely economically illiterate, and when you hear people state this - whether it's as an argument to reduce spending, or as an argument to increase taxes - you can safely deduce that they're either completely ignorant or completely dishonest.

as an aside, universal health care is actually a way to save money, not a way to waste it. but, for the sake of this particular argument, that's a cursory fact.