Moderators Should Press Candidates on Policy Proposal Consequences

The Democratic debates tonight and tomorrow will likely stick to the familiar script from the first ones, with candidates tripping over each other to see who can promise the biggest tax-spend-and-regulate agenda. This doesn't make for compelling television. President Trump nailed the description of the first round with his one-word tweet, "BORING!"

To make the debates more exciting to watch and to provide voters with a glimpse of reality into Democrats' fantasy-world policy proposals, the CNN moderators must press the candidates on the consequences of their proposals.

A good place to start is by challenging their uniform support of the major piece of legislation that House Democrats have passed since the first debates: The Raise the Wage Act which would more than double the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

There's plenty of provoking material to choose from. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that a $15 minimum wage would cost as many as 3.7 million jobs, which is about 5 percent of the nation’s hourly workforce, and reduce family incomes by $9 billion. Women, workers without a high school degree, and part-time employees would bear the brunt of the job loss impact. The moderators should ask the candidates how they can support a policy that would throw so many Americans out of work.

Or they could point to last week's reporting by The Wall Street Journal on the real-time minimum wage consequences occurring in Emeryville, California, which is "ground zero" in the $15 minimum wage debate as an early adopter. Despite the booming Bay Area economy, numerous small businesses in the city are suffering as a result. Patatas Neighborhood Kitchen has been forced to eliminate the dinner shift and lay off six of its 10 workers. Moomie's is trying to decide whether to lay off one of its three employees or dramatically raise sandwich prices. And the Broken Rack sports bar has been forced to reduce its employee hours.

If the consequences are this bad in Emeryville, think of the carnage that would occur in places like Erie or El Paso at a $15 entry-level wage.

Minimum wage questions are especially relevant for socialist candidate Bernie Sanders, who is a $15 minimum wage founding father. His campaign staff recently complained that he wasn't paying them the same $15 minimum wage that he was demanding from everyone else.

So much for all that talk about employers paying "starvation wages" at less than $15 an hour. (Of course, if Bernie actually wants to see starvation wages, he should visit the socialist countries he's long praised such as Venezuela where people are actually starving.)

Sanders's hypocrisy quickly morphed into hilarity. The campaign initially responded, “Our campaign offers wages and benefits competitive with other campaigns” -- i.e., the same market wages that Sanders says aren't high enough when they’re paid by other employers -- before finally relenting and agreeing to $15 but not before cutting employee hours in the process. “We are limiting hours," announced the campaign, "so no employee is receiving less than $15 for any hours worked.” Cutting hours is one of the exact minimum wage consequences that Sanders denies exists in the private economy. You can't make this stuff up.

If Democrats won’t listen to job creators regarding the unintended consequences of a $15 minimum wage, they should at least reflect on the actions taken by a socialist politician who has long been among its most vocal proponents.

The minimum wage is only the most newsworthy example of Democratic policy proposals that would have significant negative consequences on small businesses and their employees. By raising the pitfalls of Democrats' socialist agenda, moderators could allow voters -- especially those without much economic or financial knowledge -- to weigh the policy trade-offs and come to their own conclusions about whether the promised benefits are worth the significant costs.

"Ideas have consequences." - Weaver

""We’re either going to be the country that was bequeathed to previous generations and to you, or we’re going to be something else," . . . valley of decision . . . ." - Steve Bannon

He's correct.

Below are the words of the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address. Jefferson laid out what might be considered to be an appropriate description of the philosophy and role of an American presidency:

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
- enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural

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