“Baked into the pie”: Reduced Freedom Under Democrats

Michael Barone of US News takes a crack at Obama’s wish list. He predicts Obama, Sen. Harry Reid, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have no trouble raising taxes on the rich. Not me. I predict Republicans have made such an issue of tax increases that Democrats—the party of the wealthy anyway—will, with the exception of allowing Bush’s temporary tax cuts on higher incomes to expire, rely on deficit spending, not tax increases, to finance their costly programs.

And budget constraints in a bad economy will limit Democrats’ spending. Barone notes, however, there are issues pushed by Democrats that have no budgetary costs. And they will likely come to pass:

• One is the "fairness doctrine," which is intended to shut down talk radio, the one communications medium in which conservative voices are dominant.

• Another is the so-called card check bill, which [means] secret-ballot unionization elections, required now, would be a thing of the past. The aim is to vastly increase union membership, pumping money into a Democratic pressure group.

• Also “baked into the pie” is trade protectionism. The breakdown of the Doha Round and Speaker Pelosi's refusal to bring the Colombia Free Trade Agreement to a vote mean that both multilateral and bilateral trade liberalism channels will be clogged.

1. Less freedom. 2. Less freedom. 3. Less free trade.