Are Democrats Fiscally Responsible Now?

President Trump has made it clear with his two recent addresses on the crisis on the border and subsequent government shutdown that the crisis is about stopping illegal drugs from entering the country. These drugs are something that all Americans are impacted by regardless of their proximity to the southern border. The death toll of drug overdoses in the past ten years is equal to the population of Boston, Massachusetts, and substance abuse costs United States taxpayers upwards of $600 billion a year. Much of that is spent on Democratic pet projects aimed at tackling this problem. Even if the president and his supporters also see another benefit of the wall, stemming the flow of illegal immigration, Democrats should still be supporting any proposal that provides an avenue to ending America's drug crisis.

Democrats already support other means meant to deal with the growing opioid crisis by offering government-funded "free" needles and drug injection sites, "free" Narcan and overdose-related health care costs, and "free" rehabilitation and "free" methadone programs for recovering addicts. There are approximately 185 Needle Exchange Programs operating in the United States. The ACLU estimates that the average city spends $160,000 of taxpayer money a year on each NEP, which amounts to almost $30 million a year.

San Francisco, speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's own district, has begun to open the country's first "safe injection site," where drug-users can mainline their drug of choice in a "safe, government-funded space" and where addicts won't have to face fears of arrest.

According to the ONDCP , between 9.5 billion and 13.5 billion taxpayer dollars are spent on drug treatment and rehabs each year.

Taxpayers are also paying for Narcan, a drug distributed by paramedics in the event of an opioid overdose, which costs approximately $70 per dose. That does not cover the ambulance ride itself. Middletown, Ohio city councilman Dan Picard estimates that each ambulance run for an overdose costs the city $1,140.

One year of methadone costs $4,700 per patient , which brings the known costs of substance abuse to $600 billion annually and doesn't measure the price communities face in crime, disease, local prevention programs, and tragic loss of life. Our elected leaders are not in dispute about drug use and addiction being a national crisis. Democrats are fully willing to spend a lot of taxpayer revenue, whether federally or locally, on the crisis. These actions are not always ways to prevent drugs use – just ways to minimize the damages of it. Yet when the president says he wants to cut the source of the drugs by use of a physical barrier, drug detection technology for our border agents, and increased personnel, Democrats defy him and use emotional arguments that his plan will not be effective. If they were really concerned with this issue that costs over 70,000 American lives each year, they should be willing to quickly agree to efforts aimed at curbing these disastrous effects. This week's cover of Bloomberg Businessweek features the serious profile of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with large, irregular text reading "READ MY LIPS: Yes, New Taxes. Lots. Big ones, too. Plus, Medicare for ALL. And free tuition for..." This notion of "free, free, free" coming from a Democrat shouldn't be a shock. What is surprising is the sudden fiscal conservativeness top Democrats are displaying when it comes to President Trump's $5.7-billion request for a border wall. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi claims that a wall is too expensive while simultaneously cosponsoring a bill that would make middle-income families eligible for subsidized child care. To the actual fiscal conservatives, this may be hair-raising, but other Democratic spending proposals make it seem tame in comparison – like the Medicare for All initiative that has made up a large part of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal. While on August 8, 2018, she made a claim that the socialized health care plan would be cheaper than our current system, publishers of that report she cited shot back, saying she did not understand the material she was reading. According to the authors, even the most conservative counts of the proposed bill would add $32.6 trillion – yes, trillion – to the deficit during its first ten years. The estimated cost of Bernie Sanders's (similarly adopted by Ocasio-Cortez) Free Tuition for All is approximately a $47-billion-per-year plan for free college. Although the Democratic Party is split in support for these outrageous social programs, it should be a sign that newer elected officials are moving toward an even more radical platform in an attempt to seduce voters. Funds and government spending can be directed by the trillions toward any programs liberals and Progressives support, but if President Trump has a proposal, and even if that proposal aligns with their own platform, they will shut it down in spite. This makes Americans, including the 800,000 federal employees held in limbo, aware that this shutdown is not about solutions; it is a personal vendetta against the president masquerading as tough politics.