THEY'RE BAACK!  THE DEMS, THAT IS – AT 1:30 P.M. ET:  We are now getting a taste of what to expect when the new Congress is sworn in.  Hold onto your wallets.  From Fox: 

Expect to hear the words “free,” “guaranteed” and “for all” a whole lot more in the new year as Democrats prepare an arsenal of big-government bills that could actually see a floor vote once they take control of the House.

Come January, proposals like “Medicare for all” and a host of other generous-but-costly welfare programs that were little more than talking points in recent years could have a shot at passing a chamber of Congress.

“There are dozens of measures like this that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., told Fox News

With the GOP’s expanded majority in the Senate, it’s unlikely these measures would make it to President Trump’s desk. But their consideration on the House side would mark a first step in formally considering major government expansions – concerning everything from education to health care – that Democrats increasingly favor. And with “Medicare for all” and similar proposals amounting to litmus tests for modern progressives, roll-call votes on any of these issues would reveal just how broad their support is.

At the same time, floor votes putting Democrats on record for multi-trillion-dollar policies could embolden Republicans working to recover from their midterm losses.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, shortly before the November elections, told Breitbart News Daily that Democrats are moving “toward clear socialism,” and suggested Republicans need to make the case for “unleashing the great powers of liberty and freedom.”

COMMENT:  Yeah, free, guaranteed for all.  We've been here before.  Nothing is free, of course, but socialists have perfected the technique of giving the benefits up front and sending the bill later.  Once the benefits are in place, they can never be taken away.  That's one of the basic rules of politics.

Republicans will have to explain themselves vigorously and quickly.  Americans must be made to understand that "Medicare for all" isn't Medicare.  Medicare is a targeted insurance program that has worked reasonably well for seniors.  It's very popular.  You get many choices, and your Medicare premiums aren't that large.  The people who designed it in the early 1960s had experience with the Social Security system and actually knew what they were doing.   

Medicare for all would be vastly larger, and the Dems of today, dabbling in socialism, would insist on controlling every last detail.  The premiums would have to skyrocket, at least eventually, and the ideologists would take control.  There would, as in Europe and Britain, be grim determinations of "rights," and people would die if the "system" refused to provide life-saving benefits.  Leftists believe people over a certain age have an obligation to die.  They really believe that.  But most Americans choose life.

Those over 65 are now about 15% of the American population.  That means Medicare for all would add 85% immediately.  It's a fiscal impossibility unless we raise taxes dramatically, add huge amounts to the already catastrophic national debt, or do what the leftist really dream of – destroy the national defense. 

Some Bernie Sanders people talk of cutting the defense budget by 50%.  The country would not be defended, and our international standing would be eroded, and the Marxists in the universities would cheer.

December 26,  2018