Wondering what business Democrats plan on nationalizing next? Well, wonder no more. In an interview last week with the Washington Post, Pelosi outlined her plan for what Democrats would do should she be reelected Speaker of the House (shudder).

“One of the great pieces of unfinished business is high-quality child care; I wonder why we just can’t do that,” Pelosi said. That’s why, “doing for child care what we did for health care reform” will be at the top of her to-do list.

In her explanation as to why she wants to put millions of sixteen-year-old girls out of work, Nancy Pelosi recalls her situation as a mother. “I could never get a babysitter – have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house,” said Pelosi. “And everywhere I go, women say the same thing” about how hard it is to find reliable care.

Wait. So let me get this straight. Nancy Pelosi had trouble getting a babysitter and now she wants to make it the top issue for the government to tackle? What’s next, government-subsidized personal chefs so parents can relax after work without having to order pizza? At this rate, maybe I shouldn’t give her any ideas.

This is the slippery slope that small-government conservatives fear. Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

And although it may sound farfetched to equate the nationalization of child-care with the end of our capitalist system, it does pull back the curtain on the progressive’s plan for America. They both figuratively, and literally, want to create a nanny-state to watch over us and guide our decisions at every moment.

In this vision there are no limits on what Washington do. From the cradle to the grave we become their ward, paying our taxes and lapping up their programs.

But there are tremendous costs to this model, and I just don’t mean the kind that can be paid for through taxes, although you can be assured this will cost everyone a pretty penny. I’m talking about the costs to freedom and Americans’ autonomy. Our ability to make decision and live with consequences of those decisions has been the bedrock of America’s entrepreneurial culture. The desire to better ourselves combined with a government apparatus meant to equalize opportunities (not results) has driven Americans to succeed and invent far beyond any other nation.

We should be the model that everyone else is following, and yet we are the one’s who are slouching towards the rest of the world. Is the famed “American exceptionalism” truly so dead that we are looking to European socialism for answers to our perceived “problems.”

The short answer is no. The longer answer is that Pelosi seems not to care.

It’s ironic that Pelosi says she wants to “do for child care what we did for health care reform,” given Obamacare’s unpopularity. The most recent Kaiser health tracking poll finds that only 34 percent of Americans held a favorable view of Obamacare – an all-time low. The reason for this recent drop was “waning enthusiasm for the law among Democrats” where a bare majority of 52 percent now expresses approval.

What was supposed to be Democrats’ shining achievement has only tarnished their reputation. Not only has Obamacare failed to control costs, but there is evidence that costs are increasing faster than they would have otherwise been. On top of that, key programs like CLASS have been dismantled due to unsustainable costs and others such as the “high-risk pool” have had such low participation rates that the government has had to mandate below-market premiums.

These are the all-too-predictable effects of the government’s heavy-handed intrusion into the private marketplace. Given Obamacare’s abject failure, do we really want to repeat the mistake in creating yet another deficit-laden entitlement program for child-care?

If not, then don’t give Nancy Pelosi the opportunity. Because if she’s once-again elected Speaker of the House, Americans will constantly be left to wonder what she plans on nationalizing next as she molds America to her progressive vision.