Socialist President Sanders’ Bill? $18 Trillion in 10 Years

Jeremy Corbyn has hit it big in England’s socialist party, while socialist Bernie Sanders is breaking through in the American Democratic Party. Yesterday, under the arch in Washington Square, the one in “When Harry Met Sally,” I saw students from New York University, one of the private American universities that costs more than $50,000 a year to attend (despite not being an Ivy League school). They have a constant presence there, with banners singing the praises of the “revolutionary” senator from Vermont, who is “against the billionaires and for the people.”

This is the rediscovery of old-school ideological Marxism that declared an end to the oppressive totalitarian regimes of the last century and the repressive forces, and then went on to give the world totalitarian dictatorships on three continents, from Russia to China to Cuba. Upon observing the immortal populism that is reborn from generation to generation, there are those who ask, “What could ever have generated this today in Manhattan, the heart of democratic capitalism?” They must not fall into the trap of ennobling it by labeling it as “idealism.” The beautiful sunshine future, announced by the Red prophet Sanders translates into an insatiable tax-and-spend program that — through speeches that are gathering increasing attention — promises unlimited welfare. It is concrete and commercial. It costs $18 trillion. It is there for everyone, and Uncle Sam will pick up the tab — or rather, it will come out of the public pocket, already emptied of cash and full of federal debt.

I doubt nostalgic socialists will ever find enough consensus to sell the idea of “social justice” paid for with money belonging to others. The recipe is always deficit, and now Sanders is adapting it to America, the idea being that since the U.S. is a huge economy, why not inflate the program to never-seen-before levels?

The Wall Street Journal has taken the trouble to analyze what Bernie’s America would cost over the next 10 years, taking into consideration the speeches and plans seen so far. The idea of creating a single-payer public healthcare system (to replace “Obamacare”) alone weighs in at $15 trillion. And here are the other rumors from Sanders’ cornucopia of ideas: $1.2 trillion to increase Social Security benefits; $1 trillion to renew infrastructure (streets, bridges, airports); $750 billion to make access to schools and public universities free, $319 billion to set up a fund allowing workers to go on paid leave for family or health reasons; $29 billion to set up private pension funds for businesses that have to cut company pensions to keep finances balanced; $5.5 billion for an initiative that would provide 1 million work placements to disadvantaged young people; and other billions of dollars still to be spelled out in detail to establish nursery schools and kindergartens before elementary school.

To finance his welfare list, Sanders obviously would rely on taxes that would bring in $6.5 trillion over 10 years. It would not be just the rich but also the middle classes who would pay, as Jared Bernstein from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities admitted. If it came into being, Sanders’s expensive plan would increase federal spending by a third, to a total of $68 trillion in 10 years. For Kevin Hasset, analyst at the pro-free market think tank American Enterprise Institute, higher public spending would hit development and employment prospects: “If we’re putting our resources into government, that’s a place where you’re not going to get productivity gains,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

The good news? Sanders will never be president, or at least that is what realistic Republicans and Democrats agree on. Are we safe to say this is a bit of good news? Should Sanders win (because the GOP and the country commit suicide), the House of Representatives and probably the Senate will remain in Republican hands in 2016 anyway, and what’s more, they’ll never end up in the socialists’ book of dreams.