Blindingly stupid

By Thomas Lifson

Sometimes a serious proposal emerges which is so stupid that it stuns me. Other times, proposals anger me. Rarely, both qualities are combined in one legislative proposal, but the California State Senate currently has such a bill, introduced with bipartisan support.

The idea: give $500 to every infant born in the State of California, regardless of immigration status of the parents. The aim: supposedly to encourage habits of savings and thrift.

Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, introduced the bill along with Republican Sen. Bob Dutton. What are they smoking?

How does receiving a government check encourage savings? Doesn't it encourage the expectation of further handouts? I have been a saver my entire life, and think I know something about the subject. Saving is the practice of deferring consumption from current income, and placing the funds somewhere they can grow. It is most definitely not the practice of waiting for checks to arrive from somebody else's tax payments.

California cannot afford this giveaway. The state has a serious budget deficit, and a list of needs, as well as huge commitments to gold plated retirement benefits for state employees, which continue to grow exponentially.

There are already many incentives for illegal aliens to come to California and deliver their babies in nice safe hospitals with free medical care. That becomes the ticket to legal status for the parents, as well as a torrent of welfare benefits targeted at the children who are automatically citizens.

When news reaches the four corners of the earth that California will award you a bonus of $500 violating our laws and helping yourself to our largesse, the problem of illegals can only worsen.

For some reason, I have not found this news in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee websites. Maybe I missed it because it is buried. But I suspect it is so outrageous that these papers wanted to give the public no clue of what is going on in Sacramento among the solons. The California legislature does its worst work in the dark.