EDITORIAL: Democrats want the government to give everyone a job

Democrats have had a field day with a Republican spending bill signed by the president in February that undermines the GOP’s commitment to smaller government and fiscal responsibility. Fair enough.

But the idea that Democrats have now become the true party of financial discipline — as some respected commentators have recently argued — belongs on a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. In fact, progressives and their liberal allies remain wedded to the notion of creating and nurturing a culture of dependency that relies on a hyperactive public sector sustained by a dwindling number of productive taxpayers.

Consider what passes as innovative thinking on the left these days. Bernie Sanders — the socialist darling of the gentry class — plans to soon announce a proposal to provide every American with a guaranteed lifetime job paying at least $15 an hour. That’s right: Come on down, and Washington will cut you a neverending check for digging ditches or engaging in some other make-work activity.

Just 10 years ago, Democrats may have recoiled at such a collectivist scheme, afraid of being tattooed with the “s” word. Not today. Some of the party’s potential presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — are on board. Washington Post contributor Paul Waldman gushed that Democrats are getting “bigger and bolder.”

In reality, this “job guarantee” is anything but a bold new idea. It’s a retread from a socialist agenda that dates back more than a century. The fact that many naive young adults — having apparently skipped history class when they discussed the 20th century’s many horrific experiences with collectivist utopias gone awry — might find it appealing simply makes it an exercise in political pandering rather than a serious economic proposal.

The details of Sen. Sanders’ plan remain murky, particularly the cost. But count on such an endeavor running into the trillions of dollars. Couple this with free college and free health care — more “bold” policy proposals from the leftist intelligentsia — and the tab could reach the quadrillions. It never seems to dawn on Sen. Sanders and his ilk that without a thriving private sector, the state would be broke, absent its printing presses. Government produces nothing.

Back in 1992, Democrat Paul Tsongas, preaching the gospel of fiscal sanity, told voters during a presidential primary that he was not Santa Claus. A quarter-century later, as they plow further to the left, it seems as if every Democrat is now donning a red-and-white suit.