Opinion: Clinton nixes one idea; embraces another

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Goodbye, $5,000 baby bonds. Hello, $1,000 matches for retirement accounts.

Campaigning in Iowa today, Hillary Clinton jettisoned what had been an uncharacteristic proposal from such a highly disciplined politician: her recent suggestion--not a definitive plan, mind you--but her suggestion that every new child born in the U.S. receive a government-funded $5,000 account that later could be used to pay for a college education.

Instead, the Democratic presidential contender now says she wants to create--for sure--a 401(k) plan in which Americans could invest up to $5,000 annually. Families that do so and have an income of $100,000 or less a year would receive a tax cut. For those households making less than $60,000, the first $1,000 they put in the accounts would be matched by a comparable tax reduction. Those families making $60,000-$100,000 would get $500 knocked off their tax bill.

Republicans were quick to heap scorn on the ‘baby bond’ idea; Rudy Giuliani, as we noted last week, compared it to a controversial proposal that Democrat George McGovern toyed with during his ill-fated 1972 presidential campaign. Such attacks will not be defused by the audible Clinton has called; indeed, Giuliani trashed Clinton’s new initiative during the GOP presidential debate that ended just minutes ago.

Intriguingly, one of Clinton’s Democratic foes, John Edwards, also chimed in with criticism, albeit from a different perspective. ‘Apparently, new polling data seems to have pressured the Clinton campaign to throw out the baby bond with the bathwater,’ said a spokesman for Edwards, Chris Kofinis.

A quip simply too good to resist. And while we would perish the thought that Clinton’s switch would be motivated by such crass considerations, it does strike us that folks eyeing their retirement financial status are a more reliable voting bloc than newborns (or their parents, for that matter).

-- Don Frederick