In the midst of our debate over expanding the SCHIP to the middle class and adding billions of dollars of insurance subsidies, Hillary Clinton decided another entitlement program should be added to the nanny state. Addressing the Congressional Black Caucus, Hillary said she'd like to spend $20 billion each year on checks to newborn infants. Since 2000, the United States has had over four million births per year. In 2004 with 4,121,000 births, and each of them receiving $5,000 under Hillary's plan, that would mean $20,605,000,000 for a single year. To put that in perspective, that's nearly the equivalent to the budget for the entire Department of Justice in 2006, which topped out at $23.4 billion. No word on where she would get the money from. It's easy to talk about writing checks, but much harder to actually implement.
UPDATE: John Hinderaker calls this the "second coming of George McGovern." McGovern had proposed a similar plan in 1972 he called the "demogrant," in which every American would get a $1,000 check from the government. The plan was loudly criticized as pandering and economically pointless, even by Hubert Humphrey, and McGovern quietly dropped the plan.
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