I thought John Kerry's "Service for College" program was pretty silly. I thought John Edwards' "Get Ahead Accounts" were stepping over the line. But Hillary Clinton's Throwing Money Around Like We Can Just Print More plan is really infuriating.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home.

Clinton, her party's front-runner in the 2008 race, made the suggestion during a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus.

"I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home," she said.

Obviously it would be irresponsible to suggest this to voters before she's had a chance to sit down and crunch the numbers, right?

The New York senator did not offer any estimate of the total cost of such a program or how she would pay for it. Approximately 4 million babies are born each year in the United States.

Oh. She's just speaking out of her ass then.

Clinton said such an account program would help people get back to the tradition of savings that she remembers as a child, and has become harder to accomplish in the face of rising college and housing costs.

One way of building a stronger economy, she said, is "more savings, starting with the so-called baby bonds idea where every person born in this country would be given that kind of account because we want to make an investment in America's young people."

The savings you remember as a child? Yeah, your parents did that. Not the government. Your parents made do without new SUVs and plasma TVs until they had a plan for their children's future. My parents put aside a little bit of money for us to have when we grew up -- heck, not nearly as much as Clinton suggests the government should give -- and never touched it, even when they desperately could've used it. They sacrificed so their children could have a good start as adults. All Hillary's crappy plan would do is prevent parents from doing any saving for their kids because the government would just do it for them. Why forego that ATV for the kids when the government's got their future covered?

There's nothin' like a Democrat plan to keep people hooked on government.

But there's really no point in getting worked up over this. Just like all those other stupid plans, this one will disappear. It just really irks me that she brings this up in public to get votes, knowing full well it will never happen.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:34 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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