How would Democratic candidates pay for new programs?

Can America afford more federal handouts?

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Democratic Presidential Candidates Promise New Government Programs if Elected

Rich Karlgaard: 60 percent of Americans think we’re in recession, it’s not a debate that there’s widespread economic despair out there. The problem is we don’t have enough economic growth. We’ve been stuck in this 2 percent growth economy. If we could get this to a 3 or 4 percent growth economy, we would create the wealth, then let’s have the discussion whether we should give away more stuff. We gotta put the horse before the cart and talk about economic growth.

Bruce Japsen: It’s about priorities and how the money is allocated. Setting aside the two wars, and $2 trillion we’ve spent in the last decade, if you get the undocumented workers paying taxes on a path to citizenship, that would help raise some more money and you could give them some of these freebees.

Mike Ozanian: What really kills me is how they used to call it when the government spent our money “spending,” now they call it “investing.” But we know these are lousy investments because if you go back just 25 years, our debt used to be 60 percent relative to the size of our whole economy. Those investments have been that the debt is now over 100 percent of our economy.

Sabrina Schaeffer: Democrats sell this as if it’s sort of a mana from heaven. It has no costs associated with it, but we all know that it’s going to increase taxes, it’s going to increase the debt, it’s going to increase burdens on the American family and it’s going to make it a less diverse economy. So this is all bad.

Elizabeth MacDonald: The CBO which is non-partisan says now that 60 percent of U.S. households on average get more in government benefits than they pay into the system in federal taxes. Wow, that is a big swing. The Democrats act like there’s government spending fairies that pick this money off of money trees. It’s so cynical what they’re talking about and what they’re offering here. We’re in deep yogurt. There is way too much Grey Poupon spending going on in Washington D.C. We can’t afford it.

John Tamny: The poverty programs do create dependency but the bigger story here is as evidenced by the deficits. We can’t afford these programs but it would be at the expense of liberty and it would be at the expense of prosperity because it would deprive real companies that would employee us and move the economy forward of the capital in order to grow. We should reject these democratic proposals because their inimical to prosperity.

Report: 'Most Polluted Cities in America' 7 of Top 10 Are Located In California

John Tamny: You can’t legislate a clean environment any more than you can legislate morality. A clean environment is an effect of a prosperous society. When people are well to do, they have the time to care about the world around them. So if you want to clean up the environment, reduce the governmental barriers to prosperity and you’ll get the clean environment.

Rich Karlgaard: John makes a point. The central valley of California, where most of the top ones are, is desperately poor, a lot because of regulations that wrecked the agriculturally industry or at least heard it. But I will say this, when I came to California in the 1970s, the whole entire LA basin smelled like the tail pipe of your car. It is significantly better and it didn’t happen by accident.

Mike Ozanian: You look at something like the Paint Care program in California, that makes sense, right? Paint manufacturers recycled consumers paint so it doesn’t get dumped, great. But then they go overboard and they stop the building of water storage tanks. So they have a drought, they’re in big trouble. That’s when they go too far. There’s gotta be a happy ground here and they’ve gone way too far over the years.

Elizabeth MacDonald: By the way, the EPA is basically being used as a cajole by the white house via the Clean Water Act. Unelected bureaucrats really slamming the little guy across the country at a time when the EPA watched this, spent a hundred sixty thousand dollars in waste including $144 million in bonuses and trophies that they gave themselves since 2007.

Sabrina Schaeffer: The devil is in the details because of course we all want a clean environment, but we have to ask ourselves at what cost? When you look at some of the regulations that California has passed, a few years ago they passed this Gas Vapors Emissions bill and it had a tiny impact on the environment, but it had a huge impact on all these small gas stations, these family owned businesses. So, we have to ask ourselves at what cost are they actually going to have an impact or the desired impact.

Bill Baldwin: I’m not going to defend all the regulations, but I wonder if some of the free market zealots on this show have gone overboard a bit here. John, I got a question for you, if your market stinks up my air, why would a free market motivate you to do anything about it?

New Survey: Biggest Fear In America is 'Corruption of Government Officials'

Mike Ozanian: This has been going on for decades, people are sick of it. The voters know that the people in Washington can be bought with money or personal favors at some point, either whether they’re in office or when they leave office. They’re sick and tired of it. This is one of the big reasons, I think, Donald Trump is polling so well.

Bruce Japsen: The superintendent of schools just plead guilty this week for kicking money to some company. US Speaker, Denny Hastert got a plea deal for his bank fraud to cover up whatever. But here’s the problem too, I wish people were more outraged. I don’t think that people are outraged enough because sometimes these scandals drive down voter turnout. I think that keeps some of these clowns in office.

Sabrina Schaeffer: I think that it goes back to the point that when government plays God it makes lawmakers prone to ethical misconduct. I think more and more Americans are picking up on that and Republicans should pick up on this, that this is an opportunity to roll back on the progressive state because people are open to it.

John Tamny: It may surprise people to know that I think that this is a big waste of time. It lends credibility to all the non-corrupt things that government do. The big crime is the size of government. That’s what holds it back, not these little instances of corruption.

Rich Karlgaard: I think that Republicans are not winning this issue, and they should. Trump might be. They’re not making the connection between corruption and crony capitalism. I’ll tell you who is, and I’m not for him in any shape or form, it’s Bernie Sanders.

Bill Baldwin: Why is Mike so worried about whether somebody gets a kickback on a textbook contract? I’ll tell you something to worry about. North Korea lobs a nuclear bomb into Los Angeles. What do you have Obama doing about that? Approximately nothing.

Stock Picks:

Elizabeth MacDonald: Vanguard (VDAIX)

Bill Baldwin: Visa (V)