Monday, August 10, 2015

Stop Promising the World!

I read the news every morning and sometimes get depressed, sometimes angry, and sometimes there are stories that actually make me feel good, although they are rare.  Sometimes, though, for some reason, a story makes me indignant.  Today's news falls into this category.  Today Hillary Clinton proposed, if she is elected president, a $350 BILLION dollar program to relieve college loan debt and to make loans themselves more affordable.  First of all, I think it's fairly apparent that this is yet another scheme by a pandering politician to get votes using my (and your) tax money.  This has been going on for years and, while Republicans do it too (George Bush's drug program for seniors comes to mind), Democrats are masters at it.  When he signed legislation creating Welfare, LBJ is rumored to have said, "That will keep the n*****s voting Democrat for 200 years."  Since then we've added all kinds of things such as food stamps and "Obama" phones and Medicaid and Social Security Disability to keep people voting Democrat.  Don't get me wrong.  There are plenty of people who are truly in need and for whom these programs are a lifeline.  However, everyone knows that these programs are rife with fraud and abuse.  Mr. Obama himself said he'd pay for much of "Obamacare" with "$500 billion in fraud and waste from Medicare."  Once Obamacare got enacted, however, we didn't see much work on the huge waste problem in Medicare.
At any rate, so I start reading online news today and I see this story about Hillary and the $350 BILLION she's going to spend to help out people who have student loans, which is a lot of people and which could equate to a lot of votes, because that's what Democrats do as well--they're experts at demagoguing these types of issues.  Now all she has to do is go up against a Republican who says they want to balance the budget and that we can't afford these types of expensive programs, and she will portray it as Republicans are against helping students in general.  Any time there is talk of budget cutting all the Democrats have to do is say, "See, they will cut off your check," and they get votes. 
I'm tired of it.  I want a president who will be serious about balancing the budget.  I don't want a president who will pander for votes using my tax money.  I want to start paying down our national debt.  We can do it; I've talked about how in many of my other posts.  But before we can do that, we've got to stop promising billions in taxpayer and borrowed dollars for programs designed to win votes.