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On Oct. 27, the New York Times published a remarkable article titled “Here’s What Democrats Plan to Do With Their Power if They Win Back Congress.” Much of the article describes expanded federal benefits Democrats promise to dispense. Little is new, and little mention is made of two non-trivial matters: whether anyone must work and how, if at all, the benefits will be paid for without growing dangerously high deficits. No surprises there. This is election season after all, and we wouldn’t want to interrupt a good campaign ad with bothersome details.
Major pledges echo promises of free stuff from the Democratic Socialists of America, who have captured ideological control of the Democratic Party along with the hearts of many of America’s youth.
In “The Rise of Democratic Socialism,” the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel ably describes promises in the DSA’s new platform. Under that manifesto, no one will have bills, because in the coming brave new world “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation” will be “common goods and utilities.” It’s an agenda of “free, free, free everything,” Strassel concludes.
Congressional Democrats appear only too happy to play along. According to the New York Times, leadership will start with “shock and awe” benefit expansions in the early hours of a new Congress.
First up is a costly revival of taxpayer premium subsidies, which are needed to keep the Affordable Care Act affordable, and expanded Medicaid spending, which continues to grow rapidly. Next come more food stamps and “tax credits” for those who “earn too little to owe income taxes.” Various factions will push for expanded childcare and elder subsidies, Medicare for All, plus taxpayer-paid sick leave, family leave, and even “vacation leave.” As chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) summarizes, “I want us to be passing so much.”
Left unsaid is that many benefit expansions involve undoing work requirements newly imposed on able-bodied adults receiving Medicaid and food stamp benefits, which require part-time work, training, or volunteer activity in exchange for benefits. As my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Kevin Corinth, notes, even gambling winnings somehow count as “work.” But that’s not enough to appease apparatchiks who vilify any benefit of restraint as cruel.
Yet such work requirements remain broadly popular. A February 2023 poll found that two-thirds of Americans — including 64% of Democrats — supported expecting able-bodied welfare recipients to participate in work or training in exchange for benefits. Few in Washington today recall that similar work requirements for welfare checks once garnered the support of most congressional Democrats, including then-Sen. Joe Biden, who voted for landmark 1996 welfare reforms signed by Democrat Bill Clinton. That legislation was followed by remarkable declines in poverty and benefit dependence due to increased work and earnings. Even the New York Times later admitted, “Welfare reform has been an obvious success.”
That was well before the emergence — and, in many cases, the birth — of today’s Democratic Socialists, who offer their own agenda nominally for workers. The title of the DSA’s platform (“Workers Deserve More”) suggests a work focus. But the text reveals the truth, inviting all to imagine “what if you were free to spend your time how you like without worrying about cost or dreading going back to work?”
DSA member and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) captured that spirit well in previously announcing her Green New Deal. Government owed everyone “economic security,” including “high-quality health care, housing…clean air, clean water, healthy food, and nature.” Even those “unwilling to work,” she offered.
Dec. 26 marks the 35th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, whose apparatchiks crafted a constitution that similarly promised “continuous improvement of their living standards” (article 39), “free, qualified medical care” (article 42), housing in “well-appointed buildings” (article 44), and the “free provision of all forms of education” (article 45), and more.
AMERICANS TURN AGAINST SOCIALISM IN LAST MONTHS BEFORE MIDTERM ELECTION: POLL
Soviet citizens knew the reality. “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” was a common joke. A recent retrospective on Soviet life describes how “households waited for years” for “communal apartments” in which “several families occupy separate rooms, but they use the same corridor, kitchen and bathroom.” Not quite the $1.5 million Brooklyn rowhouse that one New York DSA leader was gifted by his parents.
Those inclined to believe promises of “free, free, free everything” might consider their proximity to so many unfulfilled Soviet rights, and question the reality of what these latest apparatchiks are pledging.
Matt Weidinger is a senior fellow and Rowe scholar in opportunity and mobility studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
