I watched about 3 minutes of the first Democrat Party debate. It was either watch the entire thing or get a root canal. I chose the root canal. So I watched 3 minutes of the debate while on hold making my root canal appointment.
I know: this is an important time for the nation. And a bunch of Americans are Democrats. Therefore, debates between potential 2020 Democrat Party candidates for President are really important. After all, we know what they are NOT going to campaign to improve: the economy, unemployment, increases in American jobs, higher wages, lower taxes, and Mom’s apple pie — we already have all that. But what we don’t have is “free everything.” So each one of the 10 in Miami on stage in debate number 1 and those for debate number 2 and the rest of the Democrat debates all have to tell Americans what THEY can do for all of us that is not being done now and how they can make America better.
And I’ve figured it out: “Free Everything!”
“Medicare For All”
Let’s start here. Both Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders have put forth plans so that everyone in American has full-time, full-benefits, and fully paid-for healthcare. Wow!
But won’t that be expensive? “Don’t worry,” they tell us. “The government will foot the bill!”
Hmm… “The Bill.”
”THAT” really is expensive, and someone must pay the bill. Let’s quickly break that down:
$32.6 Trillion over 10 years. (From Vermont’s libertarian Policy Center)
That seems like a lot of money. But “experts” tell us (at least the “Socialist experts”) that when the government takes over the U.S. healthcare system, the cost of services will go down, the price-gouging by healthcare facilities and medical providers will go down, and the greedy insurance companies will be gone. So with those taken care of, the government can just use those cost savings to make up the difference. That sounds good, right?
According to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia, doubling federal individual and corporate income tax receipts would not cover the full cost!
But Bernie has a plan to pay the tab for Medicare for All:
• Elimination of special tax breaks: $4.2 trillion over 10 years. The main target: company-provided health benefits for employees. They would no longer be needed. (That means 180 million Americans’ currently employer-provided health plans will be GONE!)
• Household premiums: $3.4 trillion over 10 years. Families would pay a 4% income-based fee, considerably less than what they pay now. Of course! Remember, under Obamacare, Obama’s promise was that “every household would see their insurance premiums go down $2500 a year!”)
• Higher taxes on the rich: $1.8 trillion over 10 years. Raise marginal rates to as high as 52% on the richest Americans. The current top rate is about 39.6%. Also, limit deductions and treat taxes on dividends and capital gains equally.
• A new net wealth tax: $1.3 trillion over 10 years. This new tax would apply to the wealthiest 0.1% or 160,000 households. A 1% annual tax would be applied to net worth exceeding $21 million.
• One-time tax on offshore profits: $767 billion over 10 years. Sanders wants to tax profits of American companies that are earned and held in other countries. These profits are not taxed until they are returned home under current U.S. law.
• Increased estate taxes: $249 billion over 10 years.
• Fee on large Wall Street banks: $117 billion over 10 years. The six largest U.S. financial institutions would get the bill.
I’m not going to go further into the details of all that. All I can do is “SMH” — which is “Shake My Head” in social media parlance.
The “Green New Deal”
Put forth first by freshman Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this deal tackles the Earth-ending spiral of the destruction of the environment led, of course, by the U.S.
So what will it do for the Nation? Basically, it is designed to clean up the environment. Never mind that the U.S. has drastically reduced its carbon emission levels in the last 20 years while virtually every other country on Earth has watched theirs’ spiral upward, we MUST make it better — according to AOC. I’ve posted a link below so that you can read the actual “Green New Deal” when you’re taking a long restroom break, but I’ll give you the skinny here: IT AIN’T CHEAP, BUT IT WILL TOTALLY DO AWAY WITH THOSE PESKY RAILROADS, AUTOMOBILES, AIRPLANES, JETS, AND EVEN SHIPS — unless they all run on air or wind or whatever.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5731829/Ocasio-Cortez-Green-New-Deal-Resolution.pdf
More importantly, the plan will stop cows from farting! (Whew…I feel safer already)
And — as you might imagine — the “Green New Deal” ain’t cheap!
“The Green New Deal may tally between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over 10-years,” concludes American Action Forum, which is run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who directed the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office from from 2003 to 2005.”
Abolish Student Debt and Give Free College Tuition
Once again, Senator Bernie Sanders comes to the rescue:
Cost: $1.6 Trillion Dollars currently owed by 45 million Americans.
PLUS: Free College Tuition will cost $47 billion annually for Federal Government and $23 Billion/year for States.
How to pay for it?
His proposal — which costs $2.2 trillion over 10 years — will be fully paid for by (you guessed it!) a tax on Wall Street speculation similar to what exists in dozens of countries around the world, so says Bernie.
The “College for all Plan” outlined a “Robin Hood Tax” that would impose a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% fee on bonds and a 0.005% fee on derivatives.
Summary
I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait to go into that voting booth and pull the lever for whoever the Democrats make their party nominee! Don’t all of these “free” things just excite you about America’s future?
They, of course, are not through throwing new ideas and promises out there. They’re each and everyone for open borders. Even though several of them “say” they want border security and they all excoriate the Trump Administration for “caging those babies” and not providing everything those illegals caught entering the U.S. want, those of the candidates that are serving in government today REFUSE TO PROVIDE THE NECESSARY FUNDING TO DO JUST THAT RIGHT NOW!
They each want to cut the U.S. military once more. After all, they liked what they saw when Obama did just that. They liked the fact that those in the military couldn’t get raises for years, veterans waited for months to get services from the VA — and many of them died while waiting. They didn’t mind that almost 10% of America’s jet fighter fleet was grounded for the inability of the Pentagon to buy spare parts. And they didn’t mind at all during Obama’s 8 years seeing Russia and China zoom ahead of America’s historical military might. They needed all that money for social programs.
Regarding the U.S. economy, they all want one of two things: either allow Democrats in Congress to unilaterally implement programs to spend all the “extra” revenue coming in under this Administration’s policies, or they want to force termination of the Trump policies that have allowed taxpayers to keep more of their paychecks, more Americans to work than ever before, pay raises virtually across the board not seen at any time during the Obama 8 years. “THEY” know far better how to spend those extra dollars. After all: most of them are in the U.S. Congress!
I forgot to mention this: their open-border policies are costing American taxpayers an estimated $100 Billion a year already. By leaving the southern border virtually “open,” it is pretty certain those costs will get to $1 Trillion annually. And that’s not all: in the process of all those illegals taking up residence in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of American citizens will lose their jobs to illegals which have NO desire to pay the price for legal citizenship. Why do so? Democrats just want you to close your eyes to illegals and let them continue to come in unabated. Oh, don’t forget: “we need to let them all vote!”
So what’s the cost for all these exciting things Democrats want to push out from a Democrat-controlled White House and Congress?
Based on estimates from REAL non-partisan experts, over the next decade, Americans will need to pony up $100 Trillion on the low-side and all the way up to $130 Trillion on the high side! And when did any program implemented by the federal government ever come in under or equal to the cost estimates? That never happens!
Here’s what I pray: I pray that enough Americans are smart enough to reason through all this and get to the only conclusion that is reasonable: America cannot afford to go down this path straight to Socialism. And secondly, the nation made a turn in operating structure in 2016 that has made dramatic changes that few (including me) thought could ever happen, and certainly not in just a couple of years! LEAVE IT ALONE!
America is NOT broken like these Democrats are preaching. And we’re smart enough to know that, aren’t we?
When it comes right to it, I choose to believe enough Americans do get that and see the truth of the Democrat Party boondoggle they want to throw on the country to vote to KEEP the policies in place that initiated the process to get here for 4 more years.
And, by the way, I’m not watching any of the Democrat Party debates this election cycle. Circus clowns have always scared the heck out of me!
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Thinking people will see the truth for 2020 and beyond. So that sanity returns.