Democrats’ ‘Better Deal’ — Same as the Old New Deal
Rolling out 80-year-old socialist ideas isn’t the way to chart a way forward for the party in the wilderness.
Donald Trump has been president for six months now and if you listen to Democrats and the Leftmedia, you might conclude that he and the Republican-controlled Congress are destroying America. But perhaps there is no better indicator of Trump’s performance thus far as president than to hear Democrats rail about how terrible a job he has done and how horrific his policies are.
Democrats remain dumbfounded at his election and they’re even more confused that the last four special elections ended with Republican victories. Their “progressive” proposals and the millions of dollars they’ve wasted on campaigns haven’t worked.
That said, at least Chuck Schumer has enough sense to tell Hillary Clinton to stop blaming everyone else. “When you lose to somebody who has 40% popularity, you don’t blame other things — Comey, Russia — you blame yourself,” Schumer said. “And the number one thing that we did wrong is … we didn’t tell people what we stood for.”
So, this week, Democrats introduced their “Better Deal” for America. But you’d be forgiven for thinking it sounds just like everything they’ve been saying for 80 years. As Jonah Goldberg quipped, “I mean, the word ‘Deal’ is hardly subtle.”
Their beloved highness Nancy Pelosi wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post to lay out this supposedly better deal. Predictably, Pelosi starts by ripping Republicans for wanting to dismantle the (Un)Affordable Care Act, claiming that they’re “trying to raise Americans’ health costs to fund tax breaks for billionaires.” Naturally, she leaves out the details of the Democrats’ health care takeover. The mandate to buy health insurance policies that cover a long list of (often unwanted) required services caused premiums to skyrocket, squeezing the very voters she’s trying to reach with this noxious class warfare.
Trump wants ObamaCare gone, though Senate Republicans failed to accomplish any meaningful repeal and so, for now, we’re stuck with the Democrats’ terrible law.
Aside from this, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are offering three empty slogans: better jobs, better wages and a better future. All of these sound like fantastic proposals for Americans, but the methods Democrats want to use to accomplish these goals are the same ideas that had the opposite effect and brought on the 2008 financial crisis.
On jobs, Pelosi writes, “Democrats are pledging ourselves to the goal of creating good-paying, full-time jobs for 10 million more Americans in the next five years.” When is the last time that a politician created a job? Government cannot create jobs without taking money from those who are already working in order to pay for it. Her proposal offers a new tax credit for companies that train and hire skilled workers and offer them a good wage (read: higher minimum wage). Aren’t successful companies already doing this and without a tax credit?
On better wages, beyond a higher, job-destroying $15/hour minimum wage, Pelosi wants government to crack down on large corporations and monopolies that she blames for Americans missing out on opportunities. Yet she calls for more of the same central planning that has never worked and never will work. In fact, to whip these large corporations into shape she wants tougher standards and even more regulations. Well, we just had eight years of excessive regulations and government standards, and such heavy-handed policy was the primary reason for the slowest decade of economic growth in our nation’s history.
On health care, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats want to take “unprecedented action to lower the costs of prescription drugs.” Prescription drugs are far more expensive than they should be, but the biggest reason is — you guessed it — government regulation. But, as usual, rather than rein in the overbearing regulatory commissars at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pelosi proposes doubling down. “We will leverage the power of Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices,” she writes, “force drug manufacturers to open their books and justify cost increases, and create a strong, independent enforcement agency empowered to end outrageous and unjustified prescription drug price-gouging.”
Instead, the best way to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for consumers is to keep government out. Let the free market work the way it should and allow companies to compete for better prescription drugs and the costs will go down. Democrats won’t hear of such things.
Every proposal that Pelosi and the Democrat Party have is part of the same old socialist agenda that has already been tested and failed. They want more control over the economy, more regulations, more taxes to pay for their ideas and more power over Americans. That is the Democrats’ vision for a “better” future. Nowhere in Pelosi’s proposal are the ideas of less government, more freedom and more individual rights and responsibilities. Hers is the collectivist, statist vision that is the antithesis to what our Founders intended. And it is an agenda that will make America lose, not win.
But hey, at least Pelosi didn’t blame Vladimir Putin or James Comey.