North Carolina's Senator and presidential candidate Edwards has found some more money to throw at potential voters and a requirement that others spend as President Edwards directs. Excerpts about Edward's proposed health care plan from the News & Observer:
Sen. John Edwards on Monday put forward a plan to help parents buy health insurance for their children -- and said that if elected president he would make them do so.I 'd like to see the sentencing guidelines that go along with this new "mandate".
The mandate, which Edwards said should be as important as parents' obligation to send their children to school, was in a health-care proposal the North Carolina Democrat released during a campaign swing."Children don't raise themselves. That's what parents do," Edwards said at a downtown health center . "Parents must take responsibility to enroll their child in a health-care plan, and America will make sure that they can afford it."
Edwards' plan, which also would provide new subsidies to help adults with modest incomes, was the latest attempt by a White House aspirant to address the problem of the nation's uninsured.
Among the most distinctive features of Edwards' plan is a mandate that parents provide their children -- up to age 21 -- with insurance. To that end, Edwards would offer tax credits to families with incomes as high as $100,000 to help buy coverage through employers or through the state-federal Children's Health Insurance Program, which subsidizes insurance for working-class families. The amount of the credit would vary depending on a family's size and income.
And so, Senator Edwards' campaign proceeds along with the assumption that the best way to get votes is to invoke the "children" and promise money from the government. A lesson that even "small government" Republican President George W. Bush seems to be taking to heart. And so, this republic continues down the road to more government and less freedom. Just as scottish philosopher Alexander Fraser Tyler once wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.Will no one stand athwart history and yell "stop"? No one who wants to get elected.
