If you worry about the skyrocketing federal deficits of the Bush era, just wait till the Obama administration hits town. Spending pyrotechnics will be spectacular if Barack Obama is elected and his liberal Democrat allies increase their majorities in Congress come Nov. 4. We already know that Obama has proposed more than $800 billion in new spending, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion “stimulus” package on top of the $1 trillion-plus in Wall Street bailouts already approved. Obama defends this spending explosion as “spreading the wealth.” What hasn’t received enough attention, though, are the absurd spending plans already proposed by Obama and other liberals in Congress, plans that would surely come to fruition with expanded Democratic majorities and a like-minded president. House Republican Leader John Boehner put together a helpful compendium of half-baked Democratic spending bills that are sure to re-emerge like the living dead:
• Tax relief for trial lawyers — $1.5 billion worth over a decade by changing rules to encourage more and riskier “jackpot justice” lawsuits. (Section 311 of H.R. 6049.)
• Obama’s own proposed Global Poverty Act that would require the United States to spend its own money working at “eradicating extreme hunger, promoting gender equality, empowering women… ensuring environmental sustainability…[and] achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers” worldwide. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy did the math and concluded this would amount to a new commitment of $845 billion in new foreign aid through 2015. (S.2433)
• New federal subsidies to buy gas for families making up to three times the federal poverty line, which would be $63,600 in annual income for a family of four. (H.R. 6561)
• Wage insurance. Create a new federal payroll tax on all workers to pay for “insurance” that would – get this – pay people up to 50 percent of the difference in wages between an old job and a new, lower-paying job. So if John Doe voluntarily takes a new job that requires 10 hours less work per week, the government would pay him for five of the hours that he doesn’t work – courtesy of other, harder-working wage earners.
• A new, Cabinet-level, multi-billion-dollar federal Department of Peace, dedicated to “peace education and training.” (H.R. 808)
These plans make clear that it would be the wealth of ordinary taxpayers being spread, mostly to people who didn’t earn it. The criminal justice system calls such a process “armed robbery” (because the government’s taxing power is backed up with arms). At this rate, “change we can believe in” would quickly become “nobody has any change left.”
