It’s important that the American people understand exactly what the Democrats are offering them: radical changes to our economic system and a severe disruption of the American social fabric. Their outlandish plans are not the result of careful consideration of their costs and benefits to the nation. Instead, they stem from a mix of the Democrats’ extreme leftist ideology, their maniacal hatred of President Trump, and a neurotic angst that has robbed them of all reason and fairness. These qualities have diverted them from pursuing any constructive agenda and rendered them generally unfit to lead this nation—which is ironic considering their constant harping on Trump’s alleged unfitness for office.
Just about everything the Democrats do and say today stems from their animosity toward Trump. They refused to stand or applaud for great American achievements during either of Trump’s State of the Union addresses—it was more important to display their contempt for the president than, for example, to celebrate rising wages for the middle class, historic lows in black unemployment, or even a schoolgirl who earned an opportunity scholarship. Even their approach to the coronavirus pandemic was focused on undermining Trump. Trump Derangement Syndrome is an amazingly powerful force that has completely overwhelmed the Democratic Party. Out of this toxic stew of rage and resentment, the Democrats have produced a preposterous agenda that would transform our country beyond all recognition.
You can bank on one thing: I, for one, won’t let the Democrats divert attention from Trump’s policy successes, which I highlight in Chapter Nine and which are not diminished by the economic slowdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The amazing Trump economy stands on its own merit, making it clear that it is Trump—not the whining leftists—who is best suited to lead our post-coronavirus recovery.
Seriously, how will the Democrats find an audience for their utopian schemes when Trump had already proved, before the pandemic, his ability to raise America to new heights of prosperity? Minorities were doing better than ever under the Trump economy, which made the left palpably nervous.1 As I pointed out on my show, Obama official turned commentator Van Jones warned that Trump’s 2020 State of Union speech was a “wake-up call” for Democrats because Trump was helping African American communities “in real life.”
It’s easy to forget that Trump’s election victory sparked catastrophic economic predictions from the left. Remember when economist Paul Krugman warned in the New York Times that Trump’s election would cause a global recession and the stock market would “never” recover?2 Yeah, with both the stock market and the economy breaking new records seemingly every day before the virus, it’s safe to say that one didn’t quite pan out. But in an effort to sell their grandiose economic reprogramming plans, the Democrats tried to convince the American people that the economy at its pinnacle was actually terrible for everyone except the villainous 1 percent, even if the American people somehow failed to notice it. But it’s horrifying to consider how devastated the economy would be today if Trump hadn’t put it in the best possible position to withstand the economic dislocations caused by the virus.
During the first Democratic presidential primary debate on June 26, 2019, Beto O’Rourke lamely scrambled to explain away Trump’s successes. “This economy has got to work for everyone and right now we know that it isn’t and it’s going to take all of us coming together to make sure that it does,” O’Rourke said. “Right now, we have a system that favors those that can pay for access and outcomes, that is how you explain an economy that is rigged to corporations and to the wealthiest.”3 How can this message resonate when it glaringly contradicted reality? Unemployment rates were at record lows and wages were rising for people at all income levels, not just the wealthy. So O’Rourke was relegated to complaining that some people have more than others.
We heard some version of this class warfare appeal from nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates. During one presidential debate, Senator Warren at least five times accused American businesses of wanting to “suck” profits from consumers and boasted about her plans to eliminate private health insurance providers because they too have “sucked billions of dollars out of our health-care system.”4 In Warren’s grim world, our economy comprises countless greedy, immoral companies whose primary activity is exploiting the American people, who in turn can be saved only by the government—with Warren at the helm.
Similarly, Bernie Sanders accused the fossil fuel industry of intentionally wrecking the environment to line their pockets. “What do you do with an industry that knowingly, for billions of dollars in short-term profits, is destroying this planet?” asked Sanders. “I say that is criminal activity that cannot be allowed to continue.”5 Earth to Bernie: oil is the lifeblood of the world’s economy, and it creates the highest potential for high-paying career jobs for Americans. Without fossil fuels, the entire American economy would grind to a halt, and the nation would largely deindustrialize—not to mention that alternative energy sources can’t power a modern economy. Yet according to Bernie, the entire industry is a criminal enterprise. “So legally drilling for oil and gas, employing millions of people, and providing cheaper energy for hundreds of millions is now criminal?” asked the Wall Street Journal editors. “And they say Donald Trump is demagogic.”6
The Democrats’ gloom and despair were so at odds with our economic reality that occasionally they’d wander off script and argue the opposite of what they were supposed to be saying. For example, on February 17, 2020, former president Obama tweeted, “Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.”7 Oops—instead of harping on the rank injustices that permeate our economy, Obama jumped off the sidelines to claim credit for Trump’s economic achievements. The Democrats’ doom-mongering also contradicted the rekindled patriotism stoked by President Trump’s “America First” agenda.8 They were so confounded by Trump’s “winning” and so bankrupt of positive ideas, they had no believable answer for Trump’s brilliant economic record. The pandemic, politically speaking, fell into their laps as they seek to directly blame Trump for the damage done by a pernicious virus originating in China.
Prior to the outbreak, my friend Bill O’Reilly predicted on my radio show that President Trump would win reelection handily if he uses the stature of his office to communicate his message to voters. Why? Well, because he’s got a strong record and the “Democrats don’t have anybody.” Bill was right, but he didn’t go far enough. It’s not just that they don’t have anybody—unless you count Sleepy Joe Biden, which I don’t; the problem is they don’t have anything. They have no credible policy agenda. What they have is rage, extremism, and the bogus claim that Trump botched the response to the virus, which I detail later.
The indignant Democrats have become the joyless party, characterized more by anger than a loving spirit, which is also ironic, since they hold themselves out as loving and compassionate. They never get off their moralistic high horses, always pointing their fingers of judgment while basking in their false sense of superior compassion and humanity. Everyone is evil but them. No one cares about their fellow man but them.
The leftist-controlled Democratic Party isn’t interested in improving people’s lives. It wants to control them, through the instrument of government. Democrats believe they know better than the people do what’s in the people’s best interests. They want to pick the winners and losers among businesses and entire industries. For them, it’s a class struggle, which is what socialism and communism have always been. They must demonize and punish the rich. As we’ll see in the next chapter, they are willfully blind to the failed record of socialism.
The discontent and rage of the sixties radicals now dominate the Democratic Party and the millions of people indoctrinated by leftist propaganda since that turbulent decade. You saw their anger in the presidential debates. You see it in their late-night “comedians.” You see it in their radical foot soldiers, from Occupy Wall Street to Antifa. You see it in their demand for intellectual conformity—their refusal to permit dissenting opinions in their ranks. And you see it course through their entire agenda, which is more geared toward singling out and punishing scapegoats than it is helping anyone achieve a better life for themselves.
Democrats and Never Trump Republicans sometimes argue that even if you believe Trump’s policies have improved people’s lives, it’s not worth sullying the presidential office with such a vile man. But we’re not going to let them get away with that, either. No president in the modern era has had to take these unprecedented sustained attacks by both liberal Democratic socialists and the media mob in an attempt to destroy him and tear him down. As I’ve outlined on my programs, and as we’ll see in the myriad examples below, they are primarily responsible for the partisan rancor and for coarsening our political debate with their never-ending stream of personal attacks against the president. Democrats and the media have so ruthlessly derided Trump that people seem to overlook the astoundingly unpresidential behavior of the Democrats who campaigned to replace him. They denounce him for his alleged rudeness and vulgarity, hoping we’ll overlook the enormous planks in their own eyes. Their outrage rings hollow when they constantly attack Trump, his family, and even his everyday supporters in the most crude and vicious ways.
Trump Derangement Syndrome permeated the entire Democratic presidential field. They could say anything they want about him without the liberal media batting an eye. At the CNN Democratic debate on July 30, 2019, the candidates seemed to be competing with each other to hurl the most over-the-top invectives at Trump. Senator Warren declared, “We live in a country now where the President is advancing environmental racism, economic racism, criminal-justice racism, health-care racism.”9 She claimed Trump “is a part of a corrupt, rigged system that has helped the wealthy and the well-documented and kicked dirt in the faces of everyone else.” Bernie Sanders jumped in the fray, calling Trump “a pathological liar” and declaring, “We have got to take on Trump’s racism, his sexism, [and] xenophobia.”10
The second-tier candidates chimed in as well. Senator Michael Bennett called Trump a “bully” who “doesn’t give a damn about your kids or mine.” Representative Tulsi Gabbard said that “Donald Trump is not behaving like a patriot,” “is continuing to betray us,” and “is supporting al-Qaida.” Washington governor Jay Inslee called Trump a “white nationalist.” Julian Castro called him “a racist.” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said, “The first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office. Donald Trump has really torn apart the moral fabric of this country, dividing us on every racial line, every religious line, every socioeconomic line he can find.”11
Hypocritical senator Kamala Harris said Trump “has a predatory nature and predatory instincts…. And predators are cowards.”12 Nonsense. Harris herself, however, has engaged in predatory behavior. She calls herself a “progressive prosecutor.” But as law professor Lara Bazelon noted, she “fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”13
The overwrought accusations continued to flow unabated. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio accused Trump of committing “crimes worthy of impeachment,” adding that Trump is “the real socialist. The problem is, it’s socialism for the rich.”14 Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper said that Trump “is malpractice personified.” Beto O’Rourke claimed that Trump “uses fear to try to drive us further apart.” Mayor Pete Buttigieg said, “When [former Ku Klux Klan leader] David Duke ran for Congress, ran for governor, the Republican Party 20 years ago ran away from him. Today, they are supporting naked racism in the White House or are, at best, silent about it.” And Marianne Williamson added her trademark cosmic take on Trump, declaring, “The racism, the bigotry and the entire conversation that we’re having here tonight, if you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.”15
Former Maryland congressman John Delaney made a particularly noteworthy remark: “Donald Trump is the symptom of a disease and the disease is divisiveness.”16 Delaney’s jab says it all, does it not? After participating in a debate that involved more personal attacks against Trump in a few hours than he could level against his opponents in a month, Delaney blamed Trump for divisiveness. Are these Democrats, even the allegedly mild-mannered and less radical among them, incapable of recognizing they’ve become consumed with hatred? Trump is no wallflower, but he usually doesn’t start these skirmishes. Legions of Democratic opponents, haters, and detractors have blasted him without provocation since the moment he announced for the presidency. Neither they nor their media co-conspirators have any standing to accuse him of polarizing behavior.
We also saw an unvarnished display of TDS at the 2020 State of the Union address, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dramatically ripped up her copy of Trump’s speech. But what was supposed to appear as a spontaneous act of righteous indignation was quickly revealed as an orchestrated stunt—film clips circulated of Pelosi, earlier in the address, hiding her copy of the speech under a table and slightly pre-ripping the pages to ensure they tore properly when her dramatic moment arrived.17 House Republicans sought to reprimand her ridiculous conduct, but failed by a vote of 224 to 193.18
An unrepentant Pelosi excoriated Trump again at her weekly news conference, attacking his State of the Union address, his record on health care, his economic policies, and his impeachment defense efforts. Pelosi also took a cheap shot at my friend Rush Limbaugh, who has been the leading conservative voice in the country for a generation now, having paved the way for me and many others to follow, a patriot who’s done more to advance freedom in this country than Pelosi and all her colleagues combined. Trump awarded Rush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the SOTU speech a few days after Rush announced he has advanced lung cancer. At her news conference, Pelosi flippantly said that when Trump mentioned a cancer diagnosis, she thought he was getting ready to honor Congressman John Lewis, who suffers from pancreatic cancer and has already received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Pelosi and her friends have been demonizing Rush for years with false accusations of racism and other horrendous slanders, but her disparagement of Rush, his award, and his illness was a new low.
Pelosi also doubled down on tearing up Trump’s speech. “It’s appalling the things that he says. And then you say to me, ‘Tearing up his falsehoods, isn’t that the wrong message?’ No, it isn’t. I feel very liberated. I felt that I’ve extended every possible courtesy. I’ve shown every level of respect.” This sounds delusional, since Pelosi has shown Trump nothing but scorn. She treated him contemptuously during negotiations on the border wall and helped impeach him on a transparent hoax, reneging on her vow that impeachment could not advance on purely partisan lines because it would be too divisive.19 In fact, at her press conference Pelosi displayed malicious glee over impeaching Trump, bragging, “He’s impeached forever, no matter what he says. You’re never getting rid of that scar.”20 Considering Trump was acquitted in the Senate, this is like declaring that a person indicted on a phony charge and then found not guilty is “indicted forever.”
We can’t let Democrats get away with changing the subject when we compare our respective agendas. But when they’re forced to discuss the issues, they try to dupe Americans into thinking they’re not as extreme as they sound. Every American must understand that if Trump is defeated by any Democrat, even one mistakenly thought of as a “moderate,” America will never be the same again.
Don’t be fooled if presumptive nominee Joe Biden pretends to distance himself from some of his party’s more radical proposals. The party has embraced a radical agenda, and that will be America’s agenda if they regain control. Biden, as we’ve seen, has already shown his willingness to bend to the radicals’ will, and he would be putty in their hands. When Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden, they both announced that they were working together to form six working groups to focus on education, criminal justice, climate change, immigration, the economy, and health care policy during the 2020 campaign. More ominously, Biden told the socialist Sanders, “I think people are going to be surprised that we are apart on some issues, but we’re awfully close on a whole bunch of others.”21
Anyone who thinks a vote for Biden is a vote for the Obama administration platform is mistaken. How do I know? Because Obama himself said so. In his speech endorsing Biden, Obama declared, “If I were running today, I wouldn’t run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008,” adding, “Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history.”22 As radical as Obama policies really were, Obama is already indicating that more progressivism is in order.
So let’s now turn to the specific policy proposals of today’s Democratic members of Congress, senators, and former presidential hopefuls, which are nightmarish on their face and which, if properly understood by the American people, would spell electoral disaster for Democrats. None of these proposals was treated as radical by the Democratic establishment, and if Biden is elected, he will be pursuing most of them. If empowered, Democrats have promised to take or consider taking the following actions:
It’s an impressive list of bizarre and destructive proposals, but let’s begin by looking at the granddaddy of them all—the Green New Deal.
While AOC claims she is concerned about the environment, it’s hard to distinguish her concern for the earth from her passion to impose socialism on America. There’s no denying that many environmentalists truly believe much of the apocalyptic lunacy they preach, but it’s also clear that they use fearmongering to advance their statist agenda. AOC’s former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, admitted as much in connection with his boss’s climate agenda. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”24
Notice that Chakrabarti didn’t say the GND is about both climate and the economy, but that it originally had nothing to do with climate. He also said it’s about “the entire economy.” That’s not code for socialism, it’s a naked admission—they want to control the economy from top to bottom, which should horrify adherents of free markets everywhere. It’s a ruse to trick us into giving up our liberty and our wealth so leftists can realize their vision of a socialist utopia. If they succeed, people won’t just be leaving New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California—they’ll be leaving America.
AOC and her loose-lipped aide are not the only ones who see climate hysteria as a Trojan horse for socialism. In Curbed, writer Diana Budds explains that the GND “is really about designing an entirely new world. It involves unbuilding our mistakes—and building an equitable, just, and sustainable future.”25 Roll Call writers Benjamin Hulac and Elvina Nawaguna argue, “At its core, the Green New Deal is an economic stimulus plan designed to use climate change, as it accelerates and its effects come into sharper view, as a springboard to confront issues such as income inequality that a warming world will aggravate.”26 So the real concern isn’t that climate change will kill us all in ten years, but that it will make the rich richer? You can’t make this up.
No one should doubt the connection between environmental alarmism and socialism. Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben confidently asserts that President Trump and the Republicans are completely out of sync with the American people on the environment. “That’s why all the thinking that falls under the general rubric of the Green New Deal is so smart,” writes McKibben. “It understands the climate crisis as a lens through which to view the world—a change to address not only its rising temperature but the rising inequality that roils our politics. If your own life is insecure, it’s harder to imagine change of the kind we need to deal with this moment. Ideas like a federal job guarantee for anyone who wants to help with the renewables transition are important precisely because they give people a chance to get their feet on the ground.”27
The Green New Deal is horrifying, ambitious, reckless, and fiscally incoherent. But it cannot be dismissed as some pie-in-the-sky leftist fantasy, because Democrats are dead serious about it. It’s not just activists promoting this, but intellectuals, commentators, journalists, and Democratic Party officials.28 Ninety-eight House representatives cosponsored the bill. In my research, however, I’ve found there’s not much objective analysis of the plan. Google search pages are filled with links to leftist reports, from think-tank analyses to opinion pieces, praising the scheme as a practical blueprint for saving the planet. So whatever you do, don’t take this plan lightly.
In Politico, Michael Grunwald recalls that the GND has been tried before. As if to prove my point that Obama is no moderate, Grunwald notes that Obama “signed a prototype Green New Deal into law in February 2009, pouring an unprecedented $90 billion into clean electricity, renewable fuels, advanced batteries, energy efficiency, a smarter grid, and a slew of other green initiatives.”29 Look how that turned out with Solyndra—the solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt after receiving half a billion dollars in federal loan guarantees—and the rest of Obama’s green boondoggles! Grunwald says we may not have realized what Obama was really doing because the green scheme was hidden in Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package. “People don’t understand how forward-leaning the stimulus was on climate issues,” said Congresswoman Kathy Castor.30 “There was an incredible amount of green stuff in it that people didn’t see,” says progressive activist Sean McElwee.31
So what exactly is the GND? The congressional resolution, sponsored by AOC and Senator Edward J. Markey, declared that it is the federal government’s “duty to create a Green New Deal” to accomplish specified goals “through a 10-year mobilization.”32 An “overview” of the resolution stated, “The Green New Deal resolution [is] a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since Word War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all.”33
The GND resolution’s “mobilization” includes, among other things:
Try to wrap your mind around this. The GND would summarily scrap America’s oil and gas drilling industry and its hundreds of thousands of employees just when this industry and its shale revolution have made us a net exporter of oil for the first time in seventy-five years.35 America is now the largest oil-producing nation in the world.36 Not Russia. Not Saudi Arabia—the United States of America. Donald Trump launched this revolution by reversing leftist environmental policies and unleashing fracking, opening the Keystone Pipeline, the Dakota Pipeline, and ANWAR. The GND would undo all this progress by banning all fossil fuels—all oil and natural gas, and nuclear energy—the most affordable sources of energy and prosperity. It would, according to the sponsors’ overview, “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with [sic] goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.”37 You read that correctly—no more planes and no more gas-powered cars.
“Right from the outset, the six-page document laying out the ‘Green New Deal’ seemed like a joke,” quipped columnist Joseph Curl, “something a few devious wags in the Republican Party whipped up to parody an expansive environmental plan conjured by Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…. Apparently, a sixth-grader was given a homework assignment that read: ‘What would you do if you had a gazillion dollars to make the world shiny and perfect?’ ”38 President Trump captured the absurd grandiosity of the plan in a tweet a few days after its release. “I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal,” Trump tweeted. “It would be great for the so-called ‘Carbon Footprint’ to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military—even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!”39
But in fairness to AOC, she’s trying her best not to be unrealistic. After all, according to a document released by her office, “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”40 On another occasion, she suggested the world will end within twelve years. So what’s the point of saving it? Might as well just have one big good-bye party. Can you see why Curl thought the GND seemed like a Republican parody of environmental nuttiness?
I’m not sure where PETA stands on getting rid of all farting cows, though they’d probably be thrilled with eliminating airplanes. But just think about retrofitting every home and building in this country (there are 136 million homes) for energy efficiency!41 Imagine waving your magic wand and creating a good-paying job for every American, “high-quality education, including higher education and trade schools,” and “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.”42 Why didn’t President Trump think of that? Don’t overlook the word “unwilling” in that sentence. As a thought experiment, let’s assume you think it’s moral for the government, using taxpayers’ money, to support sluggards who refuse to support themselves. In your wildest dreams, do you think there are enough simultaneously stupid and industrious people in America to pull that off? Yet many on the left treat this absurd fantasy as a legitimate economic and environmental blueprint.
As for the plan’s price tag, “I think we really need to get to $10 trillion to have a shot,” said AOC. “I know it’s a ton. I don’t think anyone wants to spend that amount of money… but it’s just the fact of the scenario.”43 Well, if $10 trillion is a “ton,” then a more realistic estimate of the cost by the American Action Forum—from $51 trillion to $93 trillion—is between five and nine tons.44 A study by Power the Future and the Competitive Enterprise Institute calculated that the GND would cost a typical American household more than $70,000 in its first year, $45,000 per year for the next four years, and $37,000 a year thereafter.45
But here’s the kicker: the Green New Deal would have barely any impact on the climate. In fact, even if the United States outlawed all carbon emissions, the earth’s temperature would decrease by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. If the entire world joined in—which it won’t (major emitters like India and China are reluctant to sabotage their own economies)—the temperature would decrease by less than 0.4 degrees.46 These stunning facts tell us all we need to know about AOC and her band of climate zealots. If we do everything they demand, we’ll end up with totalitarian socialism and the same “climate emergency” they claim exists today. And it’s a safe bet that even the vast societal transformation envisioned by the GND is not the end point but just the beginning. As Elizabeth Warren exclaimed at a CNN town hall event on February 20, 2020, the Green New Deal “is not enough.”47
For his part, Biden, under pressure from the left, released a twenty-two-page climate plan in June 2019, embracing the Green New Deal “framework.” Though some leftists didn’t believe Biden went far enough because his initial proposal called for eliminating the nation’s carbon footprint by 2050 instead of AOC’s and Markey’s 2030 deadline, the Washington Post reported that his plan “adopts the rhetoric—and at times, many of the actual policy proposals—of the Green New Deal resolution.”48
Demonstrating both his tendency to pander to his party’s radicals and that he still hasn’t fully repented for his history of plagiarism, Biden admitted through his campaign that portions of his climate plan had been lifted word for word, without credit, from publications of environmental groups.49 As the campaign proceeded Biden drifted further left on the issue, suggesting the Democrats push for Green New Deal provisions in the second coronavirus stimulus bill. “We’re going to have an opportunity, I believe, in the next round [of economic aid] here to use… my Green New Deal to be able to generate both [sic] economic growth as consistent with the kind of infusion of monies we need into the system to keep it going,” said Biden.50
The GND’s promise to provide “high-quality health care” for “all people of the United States” is laughable way before you analyze its probable cost. You simply cannot legislatively guarantee high-quality universal care, when all proposals promising it decimate supply and demand and free market incentives that lead to higher quality at lower costs. But when you consider the projected costs, you’re entering the Twilight Zone. Bernie Sanders took a stab at socialized medicine by concocting his Medicare for All plan, which would cost an inconceivable $32 trillion over a decade, according to the Urban Institute, a liberal group whose estimates are nearly identical to those of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.51
Elizabeth Warren proposed an arguably more ambitious Medicare for All plan that some say could cost $52 trillion over a decade. Others estimate the price at $34 trillion,52 but why quibble over a mere $18 trillion when Warren insisted her plan would not entail any tax increase on middle-class families?53 Both plans would be government run and provide comprehensive health coverage for every American with almost zero deductibles, copayments, or premiums. “At the heart of the ‘Medicare for all’ proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance,” wrote the New York Times’ Reed Abelson and Margot Anger-Katz.54 “There’s no precedent in American history that compares to this,” said Paul Starr, a sociology professor at Princeton University.55
Biden initially criticized the cost of Medicare for All, proposing instead a public option to compete with private health insurance. After Sanders’s withdrawal from the race, Biden predictably moved left on this issue and suggested lowering the Medicare age to sixty. That wasn’t far enough to spare him harsh criticism from AOC and other leftists whose support is critical to rally the party behind Biden. “The trouble is, of course, that even if rank-and-file Democrats don’t act as though they think there’s a big difference between [Medicare for All] and Biden’s public-option scheme, the progressive opinion leaders they need to unite the Democratic Party most definitely do, and, like Sanders and AOC, they’re not going to be quiet about it,” notes liberal writer Ed Kilgore.56 He adds that Biden must begin to make “serious concessions to the left on health-care policy or let it be known quietly that he’s gone as far as he can.”
Disturbingly, Kilgore observes that a silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic is that it’s created a “new context” for “policy proposals thought to be too extravagant earlier.”57 This is how progressives think—as Rahm Emanuel famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Biden already exploited this “new context” in pushing for Green New Deal provisions in the stimulus bill, as noted. As his party’s leader, he can never be trusted to reject Medicare for All, even if he doesn’t endorse it during the election campaign.
Of course, the Democrats’ fiscally ruinous proposals don’t end with Medicare for All. Warren also proposed “a bold new Universal Child Care and Early Learning plan” to “guarantee high-quality child care and early education for every child in American from birth to school age.” She claimed, “In the wealthiest country on the planet, access to affordable and high-quality child care and early education should be a right, not a privilege reserved for the rich.” Under her plan, free child care would be provided to all families with income below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. A family with income above the line would pay no more than 7 percent of its income.58 The plan would cost $700 billion over ten years, which Warren would finance with her new wealth tax.59
Sanders proposed a plan for tuition-free college, which would cost $807 billion over a decade, according to the Tax Policy Center. Warren and Sanders had separate plans to cancel all student debt, which would cost a staggering $1.6 trillion60—though perversely, the outrageous price tags of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All make this scheme seem cheap by comparison. And that’s to say nothing of its unfairness. One voter at an Iowa campaign event gave Warren a piece of his mind. “I just wanted to ask one question. My daughter is getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money. She doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?” Warren responded, “Of course not.” The man shot back, “So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed.” Warren had no answer beyond huffing and puffing.61
We need more such displays of common sense. Democrats preach about fairness but don’t know the first thing about it. This man’s indignation resonates with middle-class voters, and the Democrats have no answer for it—so we must frame the Democrats’ giveaways just as this outraged voter did. Further proving his pandering flexibility, as soon as Sanders suspended his presidential bid, Biden also said he would erase undergraduate student debt for anyone earning $125,000 a year or less.62
Many of the Democrats’ other plans are similarly couched in terms of fairness but wholly unfair, unworkable, and fiscally catastrophic. Their federal job guarantee for every American at the increased minimum wage of $15 per hour plus benefits would cost almost $7 trillion over a decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group.63 Additionally, economists have long agreed that big minimum wage hikes harm the people they’re designed to help by incentivizing businesses to cut their workforce—the last thing we need as we try to recover from the economic damage of the coronavirus. Then there was Sanders’s Social Security expansion plan, at a projected cost of nearly $200 billion over the next decade, and $270 billion for his paid family and medical leave program.64
It must be easy for socialists to sleep at night. If you think money grows on government trees, why not promise that the state will provide, free of charge, for all the main expenses in a person’s entire life and guarantee a job to boot? Of course, no government on earth has the funds to pay those expenses, especially when you consider the many millions of newcomers who would be entitled to these benefits if the Democrats succeed in abolishing the border.
As I’ve told you, the Democrats view the economy as a zero-sum game and legislate as if their policies will have no impact on taxpayers’ incentives to produce, save, or spend. So to them, it’s a matter of simple math (more like Common Core math), where any amount of government spending can be financed by tax increases. They recognize virtually no legal or practical restraints on taxing and spending—the only criterion is whether it will serve their ends.
The framers never intended the government to act as a giant wealth redistribution factory. The original Constitution, says constitutional scholar John O. McGinnis, didn’t allow Congress to redistribute wealth.65 Even the power to tax income, for example, didn’t become part of the Constitution until 1913, with the Sixteenth Amendment. But the left couldn’t care less about the framers’ intentions. They view government as a vehicle to reallocate resources according to a central plan, while the people are entitled to keep only the money they earn that’s not needed to fulfill the plan. Remember, leftists are socialists, and socialists reject private property. Have you ever heard a leftist wrestling with the morality or constitutionality of any tax or spending increases—other than for the military or a border wall?
Government spending and taxing do affect saving, investing, spending, and economic growth. Even if it were consistent with the American idea for government to tax and spend with reckless abandon, the government couldn’t finance unlimited spending increases through unlimited taxes because burdensome taxes stunt economic growth, and the government can’t finance projects by printing money it doesn’t have. The more the government taxes and spends, the more it restricts our liberties.
But these objections fall on deaf leftist ears. This is clear when you consider the impossible tax burden needed to fund the Democrats’ Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and the rest of their statist wish list. The enormous government spending necessitated by the coronavirus shutdown is alarming, but can you imagine how much worse that spending would be—for all kinds of projects totally unrelated to the virus—had Democrats been in control of both the White House and Congress? Many Americans rightly criticized the inclusion in the stimulus of frivolous spending such as $25 million for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., but just consider some of the items Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tossed into her own proposed stimulus bill: eliminating $11 billion of U.S. Postal Service debt; creating a cash-for-clunkers program for airplanes; providing $1.2 billion for “sustainable aviation fuels”; allocating $1 billion for a new version of the failed Obamaphone program; providing pension funding relief for newspapers; and $300 million each for the National Endowment of the Humanities and the National Endowment of the Arts.66
AOC has proposed taxing income above $10 million at 70 percent, whereas the top marginal rate today is 37 percent, which begins at $500,000. While AOC is correct that the top rates were this high between World War II and the Reagan era, she omits that the effective rates—the percentage of income that people actually pay once exemptions, deductions, and other tax-code incentives are accounted for67—were substantially lower then because more deductions, exemptions, and shelters were available.68 Leftists disregard critics who say such taxes will raise little revenue because, for them, higher taxes have a higher purpose. “A slew of articles have since debated whether higher tax rates would actually raise much revenue,” says Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution. “But these articles miss the point. Taxes on the very wealthy are corrective taxes, like tobacco taxes, that should be judged by their societal impact, not simply their revenues.” And here’s the punch line: “The purpose of high tax rates on the rich is the reduction of vast fortunes that give a handful of people a level of power incompatible with democracy.”69 Once again, it all boils down to class warfare.
Warren proposed a new wealth tax (“ultra-millionaire tax”)—an annual tax of 2 percent on household wealth above $50 million and 3 percent above $1 billion. Sanders had a similar plan beginning with a 1 percent tax on household wealth above $32 million, graduating to 8 percent above $10 billion.70 Such schemes have been tried before with dismal results. New York University professor Edward Wolff says that since the 1970s, thirteen advanced economies have imposed a wealth tax, and eight of them have abandoned it while the other five have yielded disappointing outcomes. Wolff reports that European wealth taxers found that many of the rich hid their assets, avoided the tax illegally, or left the country.71 Well, even if her tax doesn’t raise much revenue, Warren can rest easy knowing she has engineered a “corrective tax” to punish the wealthy.
Sanders would also have taxed stock trades at 0.5 percent, bond trades at 0.1 percent, and derivative transactions at 0.005 percent. Sanders too appeared to view this more as an act of class warfare than a means to raise revenue. “This bill targets Wall Street investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators,” he boasted.72 He claimed his tax would raise some $3 trillion over a decade, but the Tax Policy Center, analyzing his earlier, similar plan, estimated it would earn only $400 billion. Investors would likely respond to this punitive measure either by moving to lower-taxed overseas markets or just trading less. Naturally, the less they invest, the less revenues the taxes will generate.73
Democrats also want to raise the death tax, which taxes wealth that people pass on to their families or other beneficiaries when they die. The estate tax, as it’s officially called, was passed by Congress in 1916 as much to redistribute wealth as to raise revenue. But if leftists are really motivated by compassion, they should support abolishing this tax because it harms grieving family members. The tax is also unjust since it applies to assets that were acquired with money that was already taxed. The death tax, reports Heritage Foundation policy expert Curtis Dubay, inflicts “serious harm on family business, workers, and the economy.” It “slows economic growth, destroys jobs, and suppresses wages because it is a tax on capital and on entrepreneurship.” It also discourages savings and investment and undermines job creation.74 Nevertheless, Sanders would have reduced the death tax exemption from its current level of $11 million per person ($22 million for married couples) to $3.5 million per person and $7 million per married couple. He would have taxed estates above $1 billion as high as 77 percent—a massive government confiscation of wealth.
Democrats would increase capital gains tax rates as well. Joe Biden would double the top rate from 20 percent to 40 percent for taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million.75 He would also raise taxes on corporations and expand the payroll tax to income over $400,000—the exact kind of policies that encourage companies to move their operations overseas. “While Wall Street may view Biden as more moderate than self-declared democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, investors would still face dramatic tax increases under his proposals, including higher rates on both ordinary income and capital gains,” writes Ylan Mui. “Corporations would also be subject to a significant rise in taxes at home and overseas.”76
Democrats refuse to learn the lessons of history—or simply don’t care—because waging class warfare is critical to securing their base’s support, which is more important to them than serving the nation’s best interests. History shows that capital gains taxes discourage investment and slow economic growth, raise unemployment, and reduce personal income.77 The higher the rates, the greater the damage. When rates are high, investors will be less likely to sell or trade their stock for more profitable investments because they pay tax only when the stock is sold. This “lock-in” effect reduces economic output.78
There are similarly outrageous proposals from many other Democrats, but you get the idea—elect Democrats and watch the economy shrink along with our liberties. An economic slowdown, of course, is most damaging to the poor, who have the fewest resources to deal with unemployment and slowing wage growth, but this is acceptable collateral damage in the Democrats’ mania for class warfare.
Nothing better illustrates the Democrats’ extremism and cultural depravity than their position on abortion. After surveying the Democratic presidential field, the New York Times’ Maggie Astor found that the group “coalesced around an abortion rights agenda more far-reaching than anything past nominees have proposed.” Every candidate “supports codifying Roe v. Wade in federal law, allowing Medicaid coverage of abortion by repealing the Hyde Amendment, and removing funding restrictions for organizations that provide abortion referrals.”79 Almost all supported abortion on demand throughout pregnancy and opposed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which requires that babies who survive botched abortions receive medical care.80 You can’t get much closer to infanticide than that. Or maybe you can. The left’s extremism is seen crystal clear in Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s comments about abortion after delivery: “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Though the Democratic Party has typically denied applying a litmus test to judicial nominees, almost all the Democratic candidates said they would, and would nominate only judges who support abortion rights. Almost all the candidates opposed any restrictions on late-term abortions. Even Biden, formerly more cautious, tilted full left on abortion. “The 2020 candidates’ responses reflect a fundamental change in the Democratic Party’s approach [to abortion],” writes Astor. Planned Parenthood’s Jacqueline Ayers boasted that the candidates were no longer allowed merely to claim they’re pro-choice. They had to go on offense, specify how abortion access “is being undermined in this country,” and propose “plans to protect and expand rights.”81 Astor notes that the candidates were far more unapologetic in their abortion advocacy—and who could deny that, with Democrats lighting up buildings in celebration of abortion and proudly promoting the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion? While a few candidates still paid lip service to President Clinton’s mantra that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” most abandoned even the pretense that they want to make it rare. “Abortion should be safe, legal, and accessible to every person who chooses it,” wrote Bernie Sanders.82
The Democrats’ position on immigration is similarly extreme—minimal to zero restrictions. They not only oppose additional border walls on the southern border; they want to take down existing ones. “A wall is an immorality,” said Nancy Pelosi. “It’s not who we are as a nation.”83 Let me correct Pelosi’s statement: “Without a wall we are not a nation.” That’s what she should have said, because we cannot protect our national sovereignty without controlling our borders and having a regulated, lawful, and orderly immigration process.
But Democrats have gone off the rails on this issue as well. Many of them would abolish or severely restrict U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—the agency that protects our borders. They support sanctuary cities that, in defiance of federal law, refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement to locate and deport illegals, and they often sabotage these efforts. “ ‘Abolish Ice’ has become a slogan of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party,” writes Dara Lind. “It’s impossible to imagine anything like that happening 10 years ago, when immigration was still an issue that split both parties.”84 Again trying to position himself as the more moderate choice, Biden opposed abolishing ICE but still advocated overhauling the system and undoing Trump’s immigration policies.85 Let’s be honest, those who oppose securing our borders, who support sanctuary cities and states, are damaging America immeasurably. Our lax border enforcement costs our criminal justice system billions of dollars annually, let alone the other staggering burdens it imposes on taxpaying Americans.
Some argue that the party has recently backed away from its immigration extremism, but don’t count on it.86 Democrat moderation preceding an election can never be trusted. If anything, the party, under increasing control of the radical left, is getting more extreme on immigration. Many Democrats support full amnesty for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and providing them free government health care and college, as noted, and free housing and other benefits. Democrats increasingly oppose Kate’s Law, ending chain migration, ending the visa lottery, deporting MS-13 gang members and other violent criminals, and mandates for private employers to use E-verify to check employees’ legal status.87 While they claim that compassion drives their positions on immigration, the hard truth is that most of them are power-hungry posers, cynically angling to create millions of new Democratic voters.
It seems like a lifetime ago, but just a few years back both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spoke out against slavery reparations. For the left, which thrives on racial conflict, identity politics, and perpetual victimhood, the Civil War, civil rights laws, and even the election of an African American president are irrelevant. There can never be sufficient atonement, but attempts must be made in the form of cold, hard cash.
The idea of slavery reparations has been around since the 1860s, and demagogues have given the proposal new life in recent years. It’s an awful idea that prioritizes race over individual character and fosters an “us against them” mentality, which the left thrives on but which greatly damages race relations. It is patronizing, and treats people as perpetual victims.
Reparations divide the country. And it’s impossible to believe that the left would be satisfied with mere slavery reparations—in fact, Elizabeth Warren advocated for reparations for Native Americans as well.88
This entire idea is impractical and racially inflammatory—it could be supported only by leftists who traffic in racial conflict. The proposal is also economically impossible—a study in Social Science Quarterly estimated the cost of a reparations program at between $5.9 trillion and $14.2 trillion. This was based on the total number of hours slaves worked in the country since 1776. What’s more, creating a new, racially exclusive government handout would do nothing to improve anyone’s life—it’s a textbook example of giving people fish rather than teaching how to catch them. Our goal should be to increase opportunity for all and expand the economy to maximize employment, raise wages, and improve everyone’s standard of living, which is precisely what President Trump is doing.
Predictably, an increasing number of prominent Democrats are giving this destructive idea serious consideration. The House of Representatives held a hearing on Sheila Jackson Lee’s H.R. 40 bill, which calls for a commission to “study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto and economic discrimination against African-Americans.” Meanwhile, pandering Democratic presidential candidates liked the idea.89 Senators Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren announced support, and Castro, Biden, Buttigieg, Gabbard, Klobuchar, Sanders, and others were open to studying the concept.90
Indeed, Biden demanded immediate action to address racism in America. “We have to look at institutional racism that exists in this country,” said Biden. I’ve “spent my whole life trying to do away with institutional racism… [and] systemic racism that exists in the United States.”91 But in fact, Biden has a checkered history of making borderline racist comments. For instance, in 2006, he told a voter, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” In 2007, he called Obama “articulate and bright and clean.” In 2012, he claimed to a largely black audience that Romney and Wall Street were “going to put y’all back in chains.” In 2019, he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” And just recently, on the Breakfast Club radio show, he told host Charlamagne tha God, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” On the same program, he lied about receiving an endorsement from the NAACP.
Compare all this with the history-making areas of opportunity President Trump has created for black Americans and other minorities. He has been a major supporter of historically black colleges, and prior to coronavirus, his economic policies led to record low unemployment for African Americans.
It’s self-evident that the left wants to emasculate the Second Amendment and take our guns. Every time there’s a horrific mass shooting, especially in a public school, Democrat demagogues rush to the microphone and, blaming the weapons instead of the shooters, clamor for gun control. This attempt to emotionally manipulate people reeling from tragedy is extremely disingenuous, as they know gun control measures would have little effect on stopping school shootings. Consider these statistics:
True to form, Democrats demand that we believe them instead of our lying eyes. The trouble is, our eyes aren’t lying. They want our weapons—as they’ve made clear for decades. Beto O’Rourke came right out and said it during a Democratic presidential debate. “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” When accepting O’Rourke’s endorsement, Biden hailed his gun control advocacy. “I want to make something clear: I’m going to guarantee this is not the last you’re seeing of this guy,” said Biden. “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you. We need you badly, the state needs you, the country needs you, you’re the best.”98 Former Democratic presidential candidates O’Rourke, Harris, and Booker support mandatory buybacks for certain guns, and other Democrats would ban them outright.99 In response to a Twitter user who asserted that former candidate Eric Swalwell risked provoking a war by his plan to prosecute gun owners who refuse to comply with his proposed mandatory gun buyback scheme, Swalwell charmingly asserted that the government could use nuclear weapons “on noncompliant citizens.”100
I suspect nearly every Democratic presidential candidate would have supported some form of gun confiscation if they thought they could get away with it politically. Their favorite boogeyman is the National Rifle Association, which they treat as a satanic organization that has all Republicans under its spell and financial control. Democrats have consistently shown us they support severe restrictions on the Second Amendment. When asked about the issue, Buttigieg said, “Look, right now we have an amazing moment on our hands. We have agreement among the American people not just for universal backgrounds checks, but we have a majority in favor of red-flag laws, high-capacity magazines, banning the new sale of assault weapons. This is a golden moment to finally do something.”101
Most Americans are concerned about the national debt, but not many Democratic politicians appear to be—they’ve never met a federal dollar they wouldn’t spend except for national security purposes. Admittedly, deficits are still too high under President Trump, especially since the coronavirus stimulus expenditures, but his deficits pale next to the budget-busting effect of the Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar schemes. What’s important to understand is that entitlements—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are by far the principal drivers of the deficits and debt. If we don’t restructure them soon, we won’t be able to balance the budget no matter how much we restrict discretionary spending. Though Trump didn’t campaign on entitlement reform, I’ve always been confident he would eventually tackle the problem, as he understands their exponential growth, and he sincerely wants deficit reduction to be part of his legacy. But the problem every Republican president faces is that Democrats are steadfastly opposed to entitlement reform. The mere mention of the subject sends them into dyspeptic spasms and brings out their inner demagogue.
When Trump said he would examine possible cuts in entitlements “at some point,” Democrats accused him of harboring a sinister second-term plan to gut the programs. “Even as the impeachment trial is under way, Trump is still talking about cutting your Social Security,” Senator Chuck Schumer warned. This put Trump on the defensive, leading him to tweet that he would save Social Security, as promised. It was Democrats who were going to destroy it.102
This rings true because these programs are going insolvent, and the only way to save them is to restructure them. The Democrats’ position is dishonest and illogical, for their obstruction of entitlement reform guarantees that the programs will go broke. Reforming these programs will cause some sacrifice in the short run, but failure to do so will cause catastrophic fiscal problems. Republicans have tried to tackle the issue and failed because the left successfully demonized the reformers, portraying them as murdering madmen pushing a wheelchair-bound grandmother off a cliff.103 We do need reform and we must support President Trump in his efforts to restructure—and thus save—these programs.
I can’t conclude a discussion of the Democrats’ agenda without mentioning the elephant in their room—identity politics, which permeates every policy idea they have. They used to tout themselves as the party of inclusiveness, but today they demand we obsess over race, gender, sexual orientation, and other group identities. In fact, their dramatic move to the left is tied to their fixation on identity politics. It overshadows everything. “The Democrats’ focus on identity politics is ruining any semblance of meaningful principle in the party,” noted Owen Mason in the Washington Examiner. “After all, isn’t defining someone as what they are and not who they are the very opposite of liberal?”104
Biden has been among the most shameless practitioners of identity politics. “I commit that if I’m elected president and have an opportunity to appoint someone to the [Supreme Court], I’ll appoint the first black woman to the court,” said Biden. “Secondly, if I’m elected president, my Cabinet, my administration will look like the country. And I commit that I’ll pick a woman to be vice president.”105 Law professor Jonathan Turley was appalled. “Biden’s promise to appoint a black female to the Court is a remarkable moment for the presidency,” Turley tweeted. “It is saying that there will be a race and gender prerequisite for appointments to the Court. This follows the pledge in the earlier debate to impose a litmus test on nominees.”106
Any Democratic debate on policy descends into an argument about identity politics. Democrats can’t offer any policy solutions without falsely accusing Republicans of bigotry. They never claim Republican policy proposals are simply deficient—it’s that all our policies, from the economy to abortion, are grounded in hatred for some group. Democrats have gone to the well too many times with this tactic—to the point of parody—and it’s bound to backfire as ordinary Americans grow weary of being constantly accused of prejudice every time they disagree with some left-wing policy prescription. Instead of uniting us as a people, it divides us as oppressors and oppressed, whites versus minorities, gays versus straights, and men versus women. The Democrats can’t win an argument on the merits, so they resort to inflammatory accusations in a desperate and socially destructive attempt to conceal their lack of constructive ideas.
During the Democratic presidential primaries, the party proved it has no practical plan to improve social harmony, boost the American economy, or competently address any other important issue. On virtually every topic, the Democratic position can be summed up in a single word: socialism. So let’s take a look at the origins of that concept and the disastrous results it’s had over the last century.