Despite its liberal tendencies, The Washington Post editorial board once acknowledged that in a democracy, “everyone can’t be entitled to everyone else’s money.”
Well, it may have had that wrong because President Joe Biden is supersizing the entitlement state of America at a pace that makes President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society initiatives seem like a fiscal bargain. By the way, that was the infamous War on Poverty that spent more than $5 trillion over the next 25 years, and as the old saying goes: We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.
But here we go again. Biden already has spent $1.9 trillion on social welfare programs — including unemployment benefits, free health care, more generous food stamps, rental assistance, and more money for schools and state governments. Now he wants to add to that a $3.5 trillion “social infrastructure bill” — this is the new term for “welfare” — that includes all sorts of new entitlements, such as universal and fully subsidized day care, prekindergarten, free community college and student loan forgiveness for children who went to Harvard University. Democrats are also debating whether to make the weekly $300 “temporary” bonus unemployment benefits permanent. That way, no one will ever have to work.
Most dangerous of all is the planned expansions of Medicare and Medicaid. According to the watchdog group Truth in Accounting, these programs already have a long-term deficit of more than $55 trillion.
So, naturally, Biden and the Democrats want to put more passengers on this fiscal Titanic.
The Medicare plan would provide a whole array of new benefits, such as vision, hearing and dental care, all paid for by taxpayers. It is at a time when Medicare trustees warn that Medicare Part A’s “trust fund” is likely to run dry by about 2026 and possibly as early as 2024. Seniors should be up in arms over this raid on the Medicare trust fund.
By the way, Congress already dipped into Medicare’s reserves to help fund the COVID-19 bailout efforts this spring.
David Jonas, a former staffer for Barack Obama, recently spilled the beans in a tweet about the Democrats’ scheme. He said that “the politics … are near perfect” because “Medicare expansions are forever.” He’s right, of course. Once you start giving people free things, it’s a near political impossibility to take them away. It is the insidious nature of the entitlement cancer cells.
The Democrats also want to provide new bribes to citizens of red states to sign up for free Medicaid benefits. This program, too, is financially flimsy, and so when the Affordable Care Act was created, many red states wisely refused to take the bribe of free money from Washington because they saw the new programs would puncture holes in their state budgets. So now Democrats in Congress want to offer new subsidies under Medicaid for residents of the 12 states, including Florida, Georgia and Missouri, that opted not to widen their Medicaid benefits. They are calling these “Medicaid look-alike programs” to be administered by the federal authorities.
Readers may be amazed that we have to continue to expand Medicare, Medicaid, “Obamacare” subsidies and the like because 12 years ago, we were told that the trillion-dollar Affordable Care Act was going to provide universal coverage for everyone. But we keep spending hundreds of billions of tax dollars, and all we hear is how many millions of people continue to lack health care coverage. Maybe that is because all the money the authorities spend on health care makes the whole system way more expensive.
If all of this isn’t enough, starting this month, people of a certain income will receive checks of $3,000 on an annual basis per child. That is on top of the $2,000 per person we sent out earlier this year.
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and I recently published a study sponsored by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Thanks to Biden’s new welfare state expansions, families can get up to $100,000 in government benefits (tax-free) without anyone working a single hour all year!
The government will feed you; pay your rent; educate you; take care of your children and your grandparents; pay for your college and day care; pay you if you aren’t working; and pay for your health care, your toothbrush, your internet service and, soon, free iPhones (that should be an entitlement, shouldn’t it?).
The real mystery about this new cradle-to-grave entitlement state is why people still bother to work at all.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy.” To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
These people went to school like the rest of us and they, no doubt, took at least basic math. I know—that they know—there is no way that this is workable. This is purely political propaganda aimed at low information voters and the Socialist-educated to get them to accept government control. You would think that basic common sense would put up a red flag that this is phony, but it seems there are plenty of takers. The lying Liberals will do whatever it takes—lie, steal, cheat, mislead—to acquire votes. When things don’t work out, they can always blame Republicans.
They have insulated themselves from any fallout that will inevitably come as their insane plans fail. It is the rest of us who will suffer.
In a democracy, “everyone can’t be entitled to everyone else’s money.”
But in a Socialist Democrat Party State where the State owns EVERYTHING and the people serve ONLY the Socialist Democrat Party State.
The Socialist Democrat Party State hands out, what they want you to have….. Comrade. 🙁 🙁 🙁
And it isn’t free.
You will work where you are told to work and work the hours you are told to work.
We will be just like the Parrot, Puppet president Biden.
We will do what our masters tell us to do and say.
Exactly. SINCE WE WHO WORK, get raped in higher taxes to PAY FOR ALL that stuff, its “NEVER FREE”.
They did NOT go to school like the rest of us who learned to rest in peace, but they were taught to make others rest in pieces.
They may have gone to school, BUT THEY CERTAINLY DIDN’T learn!
Don’t rack your Brain trying to figure out the ” Grande Scheme, ” of every need and wants, will be furnished. By big Government, ITS FREE!. Welcome to America, all immigrants from around the World, Everything is FREE Over here, furnished by big Government Welfare is as close as the nearest Welfare Office. Oh, by the way, If you are a illegal immigrant from around the World, nrver mind having to have to have your shots to protect you and other people from the Virus, Come to America, Its FREE!?l.
The beauty of Venezuela, exemplified by the Biden Administration. Destroy the middle class, make the middle class poor and the rich elitists will be eating steak, while we the poor eat the synthetic meat produced by the Bill Gates factories. Oh what a utopia / nirvana we will all be in. The utopia / nirvana of the devil’s ****!
When everyone is entitled to everyone else’s money, they soon become entitled to everyone else’s incoming bullets. Biden and the liberals fully understand this which is why they are defunding the police and desperately seek to control your guns. WE THE PEOPLE can no longer rely on our corrupted government to stand between we and the mobs of the socially taught of entitlement, destined to turn on the Democrat creators as well. The Democrats have already turned our inner cities into the Wild West where nobody is safe except the concept of entitlement, which Joe puts himself and his family first on the list to be entitled. The day of reckoning is soon coming when THE PEOPLE have had enough and nobody in Washington will be safe from their wrath. The next January 6th incident they will carry American flags, but will come angry, not peaceful, and well-armed and organized with selected targets. Wakeup Joe, that light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming at you. It’s not too late to do the right thing and protect the personal property that protects WE THE PEOPLE from THEY the takers and abusers which looks more now like collective government than misguided individuals.
Maybe that’s why they created that ‘bullet shortage’ last year into this..
As early as the 1800s, A man who’s name was , Fredrick Bastiat wrote ” IN a book Titled, ” THE LAW, ” that Government Couldn’t provide Welfare unless the Government took the Money away from some people, by Force, and gave it to another class of people who didn’t work to support themselves. On page #30, Fredrick Bastiat writes, ” …Nothing can enter the Public zTreasure for the Benefit of one citizen or one class unless other other citizens and other classes have been Forced to send it in. ” Nothing has changed sine ” Fredrick Bastiat Wrote, ” The Law, ” some people don’ t care if they live on ” other Citizens Money.
” When The zGovernment Fears The zPeople, There is Freedom, When The People Fear The Government, There Is Anarchy. ” Author Unknown .
The regrets will be more than a few…
WISE UP and don’t act stupidly, then you won’t HAVE TO REGRET a piss-poor decision later.