Each year, as families decorate their Christmas trees, they bring down their favorite ornaments from the attic and look for new curios to add to their collections. This year, thanks to the Democrats, they can get a plethora of “free” decorations to hang on the tree.
At the top, a family can hang a giant, green, recyclable, net-zero emission, pollution-free star that was delivered by bicycle from a small, unionized company that uses 100% renewable energy and materials while paying its workers sufficient wages for them to live in affordable housing, to symbolize the “Green New Deal” ($93 trillion). The family will then have to recycle or destroy, in an environmentally friendly manner, all of the glass, wood, metal, and ceramic ornaments that do not comply with the requirements of the “Green New Deal,” including grandma’s handmade rocking horse from 1920.
Just below the star, the family can put a huge, pill-shaped ornament filled with comprehensive health insurance coverage, including dental, hearing, and vision care, to symbolize the “free” “Medicare for all” plan ($52 trillion). The size of the ornament will depend on whose version of the proposal the family believes in. Once it is hung, the family will have to take down and throw away the ornaments that were given by its employer-sponsored health insurer, since “Medicare for all” will put it out of business.
Next, an ornament that contains the logo of the family’s favorite college should be hung. The size, shape, and design will depend on which “free” college ($47 billion) the parents wish their children to attend, since the subsidized cost for public colleges runs from, at the most expensive end, $45,066 per academic year (University of Virginia) to $5,740 at the least expensive end (Chadron State College in Nebraska).
Under the tree, there will be a new modem, router, laptop, mobile phone, and everything else the family needs to connect to its new government-provided, free broadband ($150 billion). These devices will never need to be replaced because the lack of competition and innovation from this “free public utility” mean that the government does not have to do anything to increase the current level of broadband access and speed. The family may have a new right to free broadband, but that does not mean it has to be the best broadband. Good luck streaming festive Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies with your family. Since the United States will fall behind the rest of the world in every aspect of telecommunications, if the family wants a fast and reliable connection, it will have to move to another country.
The last “free” gift will be a giant box filled with the 43 million student loans that are still owed for everyone who voluntarily incurred this personal debt to attend college ($2.2 trillion), regardless of how much is owed and where the student went to college, or whether the parents have paid off their own student loans. It will clearly be too large to fit under the tree.
The family will be excited, thanks to the goodwill of Democrats, to give them free holiday gifts this year. Next year, when the family’s taxes skyrocket to pay for its share of the $149 trillion in free gifts, it will look at the Democrats and see Scrooge, making it very grumpy on Election Day. And when Christmas rolls around in 2020, the family will be barely able to afford a lump of coal for the stockings.
But the Democrats will anticipate this in advance and do what they do best: create a new program and spend a lot of money to solve the “problem.” To make up for not telling these families that the 2019 gifts were not really free, in 2020, they will establish a “Christmas Trees for All” program ($5 billion).
Thomas Schatz (@ThomasASchatz) is president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
