The Edwards Tax and Spend Nightmare

The populist candidate just can't help himself. John Edwards proposes the following should the planets align, pigs fly, the Cubs win the World Series, the St. Louis Rams win a game and he get elected President:

John Edwards says if he's elected president, he'll institute a New Deal-like suite of programs to fight poverty and stem growing wealth disparity. To do it, he said, he'll ask many Americans to make sacrifices, like paying higher taxes.

Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten, create matching savings accounts for low-income people, mandate a minimum wage of $9.50 and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor. He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called "College for Everyone."

This nothing new from the man who pays $1,250 for a haircuts and lives in a house the size of a small town. It just looks so damn frightening seeing it all in one place. Let's pick this apart, shall we?

First the universal pre-K proposal: how does he plan on this program working? Would the government pay the day care providers and would the pre-K teachers have to meet education criteria and fall under the unions? Would there be price caps on what day care centers can charge? Any way it is laid out, it would lead to mass confusion, much higher taxes and scams like this country has never seen that will make welfare and Medicare fraud look like child's play.

Matching savings accounts sounds like the most appealing of the plans until you peel away the first few layers and see just how farcical it is. The plan is not shown in detail in any of the sites I've found so I'll just have to address the theory behind the plan. Think of the normal lower class or lower middle class family; they have debt, they have multiple jobs and they have little leeway with what they spend the money they earn on. Let's say they put away $20 a week or $80 a month and the government matches that, that's $160 a month or $1,920 per year. Add to that the small return on investment and you'll see maybe a $2,000 layaway for the year. With the tight government controls of vestment and withdrawing the money, it would be infinitely wiser to just reduce taxes and let the people do with the money what they want. Of course that runs anathema to liberal thinking because in their fetid minds, the government always knows what to do with your money better than you do.

As for the increase in minimum wage to $9.50, Edwards fails to take into account what it costs a small business owner to run a business already. Insurance, workers compensation and taxes leave little room for anything else to cut into profits. Adding an additional $2.00 to every employees hourly pay will destroy small business faster than Wal-Mart or Home Depot ever could. The subsequent rise in prices will damage the economy as people will buy less thus forcing business owners to cut employees. It's a prescription for disaster.

The Section 8 issue is liberal code for integration and it will result in exactly the opposite of what liberals want. The Section 8 issue has resulted in destroying neighborhoods rather than adding diversity. Section 8 lessors know how to game the system and the resultant costs are enormous. It's a hot-button issue and some changes were proposed in 2004 when the cost was pegged at $19.4-billion. Edwards plan would most-likely double that cost.

Finally, the most populist of his populist plans: "College for everyone!" How in hell are we going to pay for that? I have an idea, ask every liberal professor in academia to take a fifty per cent pay cut and actually teach instead of push their liberal agenda. If that were to happen, the cost of higher education would drop dramatically and the students who graduate will have a competitive advantage against those who emigrate here. It's a win-win. Also, drop the ridiculous Title IX garbage so that schools can compete athletically in men's sports that draw viewers and ad revenue. I know it's a novel idea but perhaps one whose time has come.

Edwards doesn't stand a chance; first because he's run a horrible campaign and second because, like Walter Mondale who preceded him, Americans don't want higher taxes and anyone who says on the stump that they'll raise them is crushed once the voting begins. Add Edwards' universal health care plan and you have the makings of a spending spree that would make President Bush blush.