We are currently knee-deep in political primary season, as the
two major political parties and voters analyze and reduce the list of hopeful candidates
to the eventual nominees. Most will probably agree that this particular cycle
is a bit unusual, as one side has a candidate who expected a coronation, but
instead sees her numbers falling dramatically in the face of a strong challenge,
and a long list of candidates on the other side is being dominated not by an
experienced familiar face, but by an outspoken and blunt outsider to the
political process.
Businessman Donald Trump continues to lead the large
Republican pack, defying the predictions of many political pundits who said he
was a flash in the pan, and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finds
self-described “democratic socialist” and political independent Sen. Bernie
Sanders nipping at her heels among Democrats.
Mr. Trump’s shoot from the lip style is heavy on bluster and
self-confidence, but light on substance. Mrs. Clinton relies on comments in
defense of her indefensible use of a private email server that are truly silly.
"Looking back,” she said, “it would have been probably,
you know, smarter to have used two devices" for her emails, as if you
can’t access more than one email account on any “device,” and ignoring the
server issue altogether.
And then there is Bernie Sanders. The Vermont independent is
proposing an array of socialist programs, the cost of which that would likely
be the largest spending program in American history, dwarfing the gargantuan spending
spree of Barack Obama., who pushed the national debt up by more than $5
trillion in his less-than seven years in office, a debt that now totals more
than $18 trillion. That enormous number has been growing for many years, and is
something that neither Democrats nor Republicans in the White House and
Congress have treated as a serious problem for far too long.
Sen. Sanders proposes to spend another $18 trillion over 10
years, including an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run single-payer
health-care program covering every American, as well as more money to rebuild
roads and bridges, make college tuition free, and expand Social Security. That
ought to strike fear into everyone, and it has done just that even for many Democrats.
It will come as no surprise that the preferred way of
financing this absurd plan is raising taxes, perhaps including a hike in
payroll taxes on employers and workers. These tax increases, Sen. Sanders
believes, will bring in only $6.5 trillion over the 10-year period, if it all
goes as he plans. Maybe he doesn’t realize that when you raise taxes on an
activity, you get less of it, and therefore less in tax collections than might
be assumed.
Liberal Democrats and other socialist-leaning folks love
giveaways like free tuition and healthcare, and seem either immune to, or not
to care about, the negative impact on society so long as it helps them in the
next election. But there are important negatives in this plan that threaten America’s
future.
The marriage rate has plummeted since 1980 and
out-of-wedlock childbirth has soared, weakening the most dependable stabilizer
of society in history, the traditional family, consisting of a mother, a father
and their children. A 2013 report noted that fewer than half of American
households now contain a traditional nuclear family; that 40 percent of
children are now born into households without a father; and non-married
cohabitation is seven times higher than it was in 1970. Another report showed
that 40.7 percent of all children born in 2012 were out-of-wedlock births.
The liberal/socialist tendency to support dependency actually
encourages these dangerous behaviors by subsidizing non-familial living
conditions, such as increasing welfare payments for having additional children,
and cutting support payments in some cases when unmarried women get married and
bring a man into the home. The message: Don’t get married; you will lose
subsidies if you do.
The more people that live off the government, the fewer
people will be working and funding the government and its destructive subsidies
through tax payments. The system is simply economically unsustainable at the
level Sen. Sanders proposes, and even at the current level damages the
individual self-reliance that built and sustains the American idea.
So, Bernie Sanders expects this foolhardy plan to propel him
to the Democrat nomination and to eventual victory over whichever of the
Republicans survives this crazy primary process.
For socialists/liberals, more is never enough. Their problem
is that, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said, “at
some point you run out of other people’s money,” the mother’s milk of
socialism. They are handcuffed by what economist Dr. Thomas Sowell calls “stage-one
thinking,” which involves grabbing onto an idea to solve a problem without projecting
its consequences a few steps down the road. Failure generally ensues.
At this point Democrats must choose between the proudly socialist
Sanders and the somewhat less socialistic Clinton. The Republicans have a broad
and deep field, some who have proven they know how to run a government, create
jobs, cut taxes, and grow their state’s economy. That mindset is what we need
now.
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