09/29/2007
Are you old enough to remember this McGovern proposal? I am, and so are the guys at the Powerline blog:George McGovern, who was crushed by Richard Nixon in a landslide in 1972, has gone down in history as one of our most feckless Presidential candidates. McGovern ran on a far-left platform that included a proposal that at the time was deemed risible — the "demogrant." The demogrant program was simple: the federal government would write a check for $1,000 to every American. In 1972, that idea was so widely ridiculed as over-the-top pandering, as well as economically pointless — even Hubert Humphrey savaged it — that McGovern quietly abandoned the idea.But the demogrant has returned! Today, Hillary Clinton unveiled her own demogrant proposal: every newborn American baby will get a birthday present from the federal government in the form of a $5,000 check. Buying votes, I guess, is something that never goes out of style.Power Line: The Second Coming of George McGovern
I was struck by a line later in the item, where it’s noted that Hillary
"apparently first sketched it out in her 2006 speech to the Democratic Leadership Council unveiling the DLC’s American Dream Initiative. In that speech she proposed "providing a baby bond to each of the 4 million children born in America every year, a $500 savings bond at birth and again at age 10."
My first thought was "Each of the 4 million children born in America every year?" Couldn’t they limit it to American kids? And then I remembered, each of the 4 million children born in America every year is an American citizen, whether the American people like it or not.
And that’s going to be a continuing problem for programs to help the poor in America — they won’t generate a lot of enthusiasm if they're seen as programs for transferring money from one ethnic group to another. Hillary unveiled this proposal at a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus. It would go over well with La Raza, too. White voters — not so much.
See Steve Sailer’s More Diversity = Less Welfare? for more.
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