“THERE’S PLENTY OF MONEY IN THE COUNTRY, IT’S JUST IN THE WRONG HANDS”

BILL DE BLASIO REVEALS 2020 DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST AGENDA FINANCING PLAN …

In last night’s first Democratic primary debate, Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor and 2020 presidential hopeful, revealed how Democrats plan to generate the trillions of dollars it would cost to pay for socialist programs like the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, Guaranteed Jobs, Guaranteed Basic Income, Universal Free Public College, Student Loan Forgiveness, etc etc etc.

While the entire 120-minute debate focused on Democratic plans for multiple new social programs, it contained scantly a word on how to pay for them. And, of course, the compliant NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo debate moderators never pressed them on it. The candidates simply touted how much they would grow their new giveaway programs without uttering a word on how to grow the economy to pay for them.

If you don’t grow the economy to raise the revenue required to pay the bill for free everything, then how exactly do you make ends meet? At least de Blasio was honest when he stated, “There’s plenty of money in the country, it’s just in the wrong hands.” So there’s your answer — classic socialist wealth redistribution: when you run out of one group of people’s money, go after another group of people’s money.

What is the cost for the Democratic Socialist plans and who specifically will be taxed to pay the bill?

The 10-year cumulative cost estimate for all Democratic Socialist plans totals $134 trillion, or $13.4 trillion per year:

To put this cost in perspective, the entire annual U.S. Federal Budget in 2020 will be $4.75 trillion, with a projected $3.64 trillion in revenue and $1.103 trillion in deficit spending. If all of these Democratic Socialist plans were enacted, they would more than double the size of the federal government.

Senator Elizabeth Warren says she would pay for these radical plans by raising taxes on high-income earners. Warren would impose an “ultra-millionaire tax” on the richest 0.1 percent of Americans. The proposal would place a two percent levy on households worth $50 million or more. For those making more than $1 billion, the tax would rise to three percent. Warren’s plan is estimated to bring in $2.75 trillion in tax revenue over a ten-year period, or $0.275 trillion per year.

Senator Bernie Sanders says he would pay for Medicare For All by two methods: 1) raising taxes on high-income earners and 2) increasing payroll taxes. The United States levies two major payroll taxes. As the Tax Foundation explains, the first is a 12.4 percent tax used to fund Social Security. The tax is paid half by employers and half by employees, although employees bear the full economic cost of the tax. The second is a 2.9 percent payroll tax to fund Medicare. As with the Social Security payroll tax, this tax is split evenly between employers and employees. So, bottom line, besides employers and the super-rich, workers in all income levels would bear a substantial portion of the cost of Bernie’s plan.

Again, if all Democratic Socialist plans were enacted, how would they make up the shortfall between their annual cost of $13.4 trillion and $0.275 trillion in new tax-the-super-rich revenue? Okay, we’ll be fair. Let’s say only two-thirds or $9 trillion of the $13.4 trillion per year agenda gets approved by a new Democratic controlled Congress and signed into law by a new Democratic President in 2020. Even taking every single penny of adjusted gross income earned by tax filers in the top 50% would not be enough money to pay the costs.

In summary, the radical 2020 agenda of most Democratic presidential candidates is unrealistic and threatens the viability of our economy and individual freedom.

On being unrealistic … According to Investor’s Business Daily, economists expect the entire U.S. gross domestic product over the next decade to total $266 trillion. That means these Democratic Socialist proposals would account for up to 50% of the nation’s economy from 2020 to 2029. That’s on top of existing federal government programs, which already consume more than 20% of GDP each year. It isn’t just unrealistic, it would be catastrophic.

On the threat to the economy … Taxing the super-rich won’t come close to paying the bills. Even confiscating all the earnings of middle-class wage earners won’t be enough. But that won’t stop the new breed of Democratic Socialists from trying. They may only be aiming to soak the rich now, but eventually they will target the earnings of every American household to fund their insatiable quest for more power, which knows no bounds. As former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher once said when highlighting the failed socialist policies of England’s Labour Party in the 1970’s, “I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.”

On the threat to individual freedom … New Democratic Socialist policies proposing universal government control of health care, climate, education, employment, speech and the media is an attempt to gain more power over individual freedoms. It’s what Margaret Thatcher referred to as “nationalization” in the 1970’s: “They (Socialists) start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.”

American voters selecting their future leaders would be wise to heed Margaret Thatcher’s accurate and prescient critique of socialist policies that are now reemerging and threatening democratic capitalism in the United States today.