Centerfield

Higher Education Fund As New Entitlement?

My feeling is that this kind of thing could do good, but, like Mankiw, I'd like to see the see the government get its act together on debt and Medicare/Medicaid and SS before creating another potentially large entitlement. The trend in the Bush Administration has been decidedly negative so far. It's been suggested that it'd pay for itself, but we won't know that for twenty-five years; it couldn't even hope to really start paying back until well into when Medicaid/are crises have begun.

And, like other entitlements, it would tend to inflate.

Apparently, I have company. 60%ish of likely voters are also against it. Sabato is quoted in the poll report as writing,

The baby bonds proposal is one of the few mistakes Hillary Clinton has made in her campaign. Should Clinton become the Democratic nominee, she may have handed a powerful issue to the Republican candidate.

More here.

Alot of conservatives are having fun characterizing this as trying to buy the American people. Something to that, really, but I'm somehow failing to see the difference between this and then leaving a tax cut in place AND raising spending when a deficit is going.