At a Congressional Black Caucus forum last week, Hillary Clinton suggested that every child born in the U.S. be given a $5,000 "baby bond" to collect interest until their 18th birthday (similar to the idea suggested by Time managing editor Rick Stengel in August.) The remark was immediately tagged a severe misstep, and her biggest policy blunder. And on Monday, Rasmussen released a poll showing that among likely voters, 60 percent oppose the "baby bond" idea, and only 27 percent support it. Rasmussen quotes Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia on why the suggestion is so unpopular. "This sounds too much like the 'spend and spend' Democratic party of old ... To most people, the baby bonds proposal seems like yet another expansive entitlement--just handing out money indiscriminately at a time of massive national debt." And it might sound that way--until you consider that with 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year, baby bonds would cost $20 billion annually. To put that in budgetary perspective, the U.S. spends $10 billion a month in Iraq. And the proposal has interesting precedents in Britain's successful Child Trust Funds, and in the 1944 G.I. Bill, which helped veterans returning from the war invest in a home. (Mark Green has more on that here.) And there's certainly a case to be made that investing in American kids' future is just that, an investment, and one that will pay off for the country in the long-term through a better-educated, more productive workforce, a lower crime rate, etc. Granted, the Bush administration's wild spending in Iraq is not justification for the Democrats to spend wildly on domestic programs, and Clinton hasn't proposed a plan for how she'd pay for the bonds--right now, her spokesman insisted the bonds were not a policy proposal, but an idea under consideration. Still, let's not hyperventilate about that $20 billion figure just yet. --Marin Cogan