RUSH: By the way, a little news from California. The Republican lawmaker who coauthored a bill that would give every child born in California a $500 savings account has withdrawn his support following a backlash within his own party. This would be Senator Bob Dutton, who had promoted the measure as a good investment. He announced Friday he no longer supported the bill that he had introduced two days before with Senator Darrell Steinberg, the Democrat coauthor.
In a press release, Dutton said that ?thousands of Californians had asked him what he was thinking over the past 48 hours. Although he defended the savings account idea as a way for Republicans to help individuals become self-sufficient, Dutton said that he couldn’t support the bill because of the state’s deteriorating fiscal stability. He said hysteria over immigration had pressured his colleague to withdraw his support.? I don’t think that had much to do with it. I think it was our morning update and repeated comments on this program. If you’ve forgotten, this was a bill that was going to give every California child 500 bucks, including the children of illegals, and it was going to cost $300 million. They said the $500 would pay for a home, health care, financial independence, so forth and so on. It’s patently ridiculous, the idea that $500 goes into an account and stays there. By the way, if there’s ever an argument for private accounts and Social Security, this would be it, but with your own money, not the taxpayers’.
What’s a Republican doing proposing this? Financial independence thanks to the government? Anybody remember George McGovern proposing this in 1972 in his presidential campaign? He was going to give everybody a thousand dollars, and he lost in a landslide. The American people, including Californians, instinctively react to this sort of thing as being outrageous. I think one of these two guys, either Steinberg or Dutton in their calculations, said if you put that 500 bucks in there the moment you’re born and don’t touch it, by the time you’re 18 or whatever, you?ll get $17,000 and with that you’re going to go buy health care, with that you’re going to go buy a house. It’s ridiculous on its face. We had a call on Open Line Friday, and the guy hung up, and he was going to take issue with me about this, thinking that this is a very good way to promote financial independence. I wish the guy would have held on. Because if $500 is good, why not a thousand? Why not make that $17,000 and $34,000 when you’re 18? If a thousand is good at birth, why not the government give everybody $10,000? Where does this stop? If the idea is good, the amount of money is irrelevant, is it not?
This is what I mean when I say I’m getting a little concerned as the Republican presidential campaign kicks off that conservatism is being redefined. This guy, Dutton, in California is a Republican. This is not a conservative idea for the government to give people 500 bucks when they’re born. Maybe if you want to give a kid 500 bucks when he’s born if his mother was talked out of an abortion, then maybe we could talk, because it’s a reward for having succeeded in being born. But other than that, it’s just patently absurd, and it is certainly not conservative and in very few places is it even Republican.