Joe Biden wants to give free health care to illegal aliens. Unfortunately for Joe’s pretentions to magnanimity, illegal aliens already receive free health care in the United States to the tune of $18.5 billion per year, according to a report published in Forbes last year. In Biden’s defense, it’s easy to lose track of ten or twenty billion as Democrat presidential contenders compete for their party’s nomination by offering everything to everyone for free.
Democrats’ free stuff primary promises voters a need-free life from cradle to grave. Senator Elizabeth Warren has pledged free child care for all Americans. According to the Center for American Progress, child care for American infants costs on average nearly $15,000 per year. The financial services firm Moody’s pegs the cost of Warren’s program at $1.7 billion over ten years.
Once young Americans leave free daycare, Democrat presidential candidates would like the government to educate them, not merely through high school, but through college as well. Bernie Sanders has pledged to make community colleges and four-year public universities free for families earning less than $125,000 per year. Elizabeth Warren would take Bernie’s plan a step further. In addition to free public college, she would give each of the 42 million Americans currently paying off their students loans up to $50,000. Warren herself estimates that plan would cost an additional $1.25 trillion over ten years. In the Senate, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand have all co-sponsored the “Debt-Free College Act,” estimated to cost $95.4 billion per year.
But college is only the beginning. After graduation come the real political handouts. For those recent grads “unable or unwilling to work,” a universal basic income would replenish their bank accounts each month. Most 2020 Democrats have endorsed this income entitlement through the Green New Deal, estimated to cost $93 trillion over ten years.
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