A New Direction for Democrats?

After being rescheduled several times for one reason or another Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin and Steny Hoyer unveiled their “New Direction for America” this afternoon.
Their plan (available here in .pdf format), details six points that the Democrat leadership think will help them win back the House and Senate this November in the mid-term elections.
The six points are listed below along with appropriate commentary and translation from me.

Make Health Care More Affordable: Fix the prescription drug program by putting people ahead of drug companies and HMO’s, eliminating wasteful subsidies, negotiating lower drug prices and ensuring the program works for all seniors; invest in stem cell and other medical research.

Negotiating lower drug prices? These guys can’t figure out how to pay less than $60,000 for a screwdriver. Investing in stem cell research, ensuring the program works for all seniors, eliminating wasteful subsidies—that’s all codespeak for one thing: raising your taxes.

Lower Gas Prices and Achieve Energy Independence: Crack down on price gouging; eliminate billions in subsidies for oil and gas companies and use the savings to provide consumer relief and develop American alternatives, including biofuels; promote energy efficient technology.

OK, so a string of investigations by the Justice Department has concluded there’s no price gouging going on. The rest of that stuff…yep, you guessed it. More of your tax dollars coming out of your paycheck.

Help Working Families: Raise the minimum wage; repeal tax giveaways that encourage companies to move jobs overseas.

Hmmm…so raising your taxes isn’t enough for them. Now they want to raise your cost of living by raising the minimum wage which would potentially raise the prices of goods and services you purchase. They just won’t be happy until you’re paying more across the board.

Cut College Costs: Make college tuition deductible from taxes; expand Pell grants and slash student loan costs.

Who is paying for this? One guess…and it’s not Congress.

Ensure Dignified Retirement: Prevent the privatization of Social Security; expand savings incentives; and ensure pension fairness.

Ensure pension fairness? Fairness from whom…for whom? What the hell does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means: government guaranteed pensions–with you picking up the bill. The best way for the Democrats to ensure “fairness” and avoid another Enron-like mess is if the Government runs the show. Hey, look! More dollars out of yours and my pockets!

Require Fiscal Responsibility: Restore the budget discipline of the 1990s that helped eliminate deficits and spur record economic growth.

You already know how they achieved that—tax increases.
This “New Direction for America” is the same, tired old song the Democrats always sing. There’s no vision here–nothing new. The Democrats haven’t had an original idea in decades and this is no exception. You can put paint on a pig and, at the end of the day, it’s still a pig.
Tax increases, tax increase, tax increases. It’s all the Democrats in Washington know. This is the plan they believe will help them re-gain control of Congress–taking control of more of your hard-earned money.
That’s a new direction?
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com