$5K gift for every newborn?

Hillary Clinton recently toyed with the idea of giving every newborn a $5,000 "baby bond" from the federal government to offset college or home expenses when they get older.

When I first read the article, I thought, "Great! When I have another baby, that would be awesome." Then I thought some more: "What about my other kids who were born a couple years ago?" That cooled my optimism a bit.

Now, to be clear, Clinton was merely toying with the idea and not recommending or proposing it. There is a big difference between thinking aloud and pushing an agenda. But here are my reasons why this idea disappoints me:

(1) There is no guarantee the money will be wisely spent if we're just handing over a bond that can be cashed in after X years. So are we actually paying for the next generation's crack addiction? Or funding the next porn start up? Or a million other things which might be okay but not necessary?

Solution: make it an education account that can only be spent for college expenses. Associated problem with that: if the money has already been distributed and is never used, the government is still in debt with no tangible benefit. Boo to that!

(2) Back in the day, I was not a fan of Bill Clinton but I admired one thing he did VERY VERY much: he pushed for fiscal responsibility. The words "balanced budget" have been replaced by the Dubya Generation with the terms "war spending." A huge boo to that. But that's beside the point. When I thought about Hillary running for office, I thought that maybe one upside to her platform would be more fiscal responsibility. A proposal like this disappoints me because it reeks of increased debt.

Let's do the math. CNN estimated four million children born each year in the USA.

$5,000 x 4,000,000 = $20,000,000,000

That's just an impossibly huge amount of money to spend each year on something that only might be beneficial to a select portion of the population. If you want to put that money into education, put it into those who are seeking education NOW and see if it works. If you want to put the money into helping people get into a home of their own, put that money into the market NOW while the real estate and mortgage markets are so perilous.

I'm sure that after the numbers are run and Hillary thinks it over, this idea will fade into obscurity. If it doesn't, I'll be fascinated to see how she proposes making this attractive or even feasible.

In the meantime, my "confidence level" in that one particular candidate slipped a little today. Which is frightening when my confidence level in most of the candidates is already so low.