"If
the taxpayer rescue of Wall Street and Uncle Sam's taking over the banking
system scares you, the broader socialism planned by the Democratic presidential
nominee [Barack Hussein Obama] should leave you
petrified.
Here are a few examples, with price tags provided by the National Taxpayers
Union Foundation:
• Politicized financial regulation: Obama would establish a Financial
Market Regulation and Oversight Commission to "end our balkanized framework of
overlapping and competing regulatory agencies" and "which would meet regularly
and report to the president, the president's financial working group and
Congress on the state of our financial markets and the systemic risks that face
them."
Translation: more centralized and heavy-handed regulatory power over
businesses for Washington.
• Government-managed medicine: Even left-leaning health care experts
concede that Obama's expanded coverage plan will cost $100 billion; with no real
cost containment, that will mean a second wave of reform that could impose full
socialized medicine on our country.
Obama declares that "governments at all levels should lead the effort to
develop a national and regional strategy for public health, and align funding
mechanisms to support its implementation."
His plan also presumes racial discrimination, "requiring hospitals and health
plans to collect, analyze and report health care quality for disparity
populations and holding them accountable for any differences found."
• Community health centers: Your local doctor may become obsolete in
Obama's brave new world in which $6.7 billion will be spent over five years
building "community health centers" featuring "preventive, diagnostic and other
primary care services."
• Antitrust enforcement: Promising this "is how we ensure that
capitalism works for consumers," a President Obama would "stop or restructure
those mergers that are likely to harm consumer welfare, while quickly clearing
those that do not" and "working with foreign governments to change unsound
competition laws."
Behind this harmless-sounding rhetoric is the misguided belief that the
government must shield companies of its choosing from their competitors' lower
prices and innovative practices. Courts and government bureaucrats under Obama
could be expected to use antitrust to claim the existence of imaginary
monopolies and squash mergers and other business transactions.
• Required IRAs: Under Obama, "employers who do not currently offer a
retirement plan will be required to automatically enroll their employees in a
direct deposit IRA account."
Costing $292 billion annually, according to the NTUF's latest analysis,
Obama's plans are far more than just "change"; they would transfigure American
society into full-blown socialism. With little more than a month to go before
this most consequential election, voters seem not to appreciate the danger.
• Dictatorial energy policy: Obama would spend $150 billion over a
decade "to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure,
accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids" and create other ways to
force uneconomical forms of energy on the auto and oil industry.
A Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund would artificially
finance the environmentalist pet projects in which private investors have little
faith.
Negating the global labor market, the Illinois senator also promises to
"provide specific tax assistance and loan guarantees to the domestic auto
industry to ensure that new fuel-efficient cars and trucks" are built within the
U.S.
• Bullying utilities: The Chicago Democrat would require that 25% of
electricity consumed in the U.S. be "derived from clean, sustainable energy
sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2025." Unless those alternative
sources get cheap fast, that likely means a big escalation in consumers'
electric bills.
Obama also proposes "to 'flip' incentives to state and local utilities by
ensuring companies get increased profits for improving energy efficiency, rather
than higher energy consumption."
• Billions for teachers unions: Instead of school choice for parents,
in which competition would improve public educations and give the poor access to
private education, Obama proposes "an accountability system that supports
schools to improve, rather than focuses on punishments."
His five-year, $90 billion education plan would dole out "a $200 million
grant program for states and districts that want to provide additional learning
time for students in need," double federal funding for afterschool programs,
provide "professional development and coaching to school leaders, teachers and
other school personnel," "develop multi-tiered credentialing systems that
encourage principals to grow professionally," and cook up other ways to keep
public school teachers on the clock longer.
Uncle Sam would also "collect evidence about how prospective teachers plan
and teach in the classroom" in an Obama administration.
• Required public service: In return for the federal government paying
the first $4,000 of college tuition through a tax credit — which would be tough
for most American families to turn down — Obama would require recipients "to
conduct 100 hours of public service a year."
• Required sick leave: Spending $1.5 billion over five years, Obama
would "encourage" the states to adopt paid-leave systems that "guarantee workers
seven days of paid sick leave per year."
• Thought police: In what sounds like the outdated and
unconstitutional Fairness Doctrine on steroids, Obama would "encourage diversity
in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media
outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest
obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum."
What would the "public interest obligations" of liberal Democrats' opponents
within the media end up being in an Obama administration?
• Green Corps: Barack Obama would spend $390 million over five years
to fund "an energy-focused Green Jobs Corps to engage disconnected and
disadvantaged youth . . . to improve the energy efficiency of homes and
buildings in their communities, while also providing them with practical skills
and experience in important career fields of expected high-growth employment."
It's a quasi-paramilitary organization dedicated to environmentalism that
promises inductees that they would be getting practical employment training for
future "green jobs."
• Teaching parents parenting: The senator would spend $300 million
over five years establishing "Promise Neighborhoods in cities that have high
levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement." A
key feature would be "parenting schools for parents."
• Housebuilding army: the Youthbuild program would be expanded from
8,000 to 50,000 over eight years at a cost of $257 million to "construct and
rehabilitate affordable housing for low-income and homeless families."
• Patent reform: Obama's idea of "opening up the patent process to
citizen review" would make it much tougher for businesses to challenge the
government's judgment on the ownership rights of an invention, which will have a
negative effect on the incentives to innovate.
• Private parklands regulation: Obama would "do more to encourage
private citizens to protect the open spaces and forests they own and the
endangered species that live there . . . and encourage communities to enhance
local greenspace, wildlife and conservation areas."
The Obama campaign uses the word "encourage" over and over in numerous areas
of policy. Expect it to be the form of encouragement practiced by Don Corleone —
making you an offer you can't refuse.
• Autism czar: If you weren't convinced that the Democratic nominee
intends to use the federal government's powers to solve every known problem,
consider his promise to spend $2.5 billion over four years on appointment of an
"Autism Czar" to "ensure that all federal funds are being spent in a manner that
prioritizes results."