A new Reuters news organization polls reaffirms Americans are hopelessly hooked on gub’mit handouts.
Despite the foolishness of the idea, this poll says the public wants the budget balanced by spending cuts, but they only want cuts in defense spending; not cuts in “entitlements.” By that I assume they mean don’t touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or anything else that puts tax-derived dollars back into their pockets.
This is self-serving, yet self-destructive behavior: Don’t gore my ox. I want my handout. Take it from someone else. Sadly, I saw some of this behavior from agricultural interests just the other day.
It always reminds me of the Romans rioting near the end of their empire and crying for more free “bread and circuses” from their government which was corrupt, spread too thin and broke.
The truth about our situation is there are no other budget items big enough which we can cut enough to make the difference.
Admittedly it’s hard to get the truth from our government leaders but it appears Social Security is one of the biggest budgets and one of the biggest problems. It is supposedly a separate account from the rest of the federal taxed money, but has been eternally “borrowed from” by government leaders until it’s now in the hole. Today more money is going out than is coming in.
According to the U.S. Treasury, the four biggest items in the budget today are the (1) Health and Human Services, which includes Medicare and Medicaid, (2) Social Security, (3) the Department of Defense, (4) the Treasury Department, which pays interest on the national debt.
Here is an interesting page outlining problems with federal spending and taxing and offering literally dozens of links.
Read for yourself.
I’ve said it before but it needs saying again: “We’re all in this together. Everyone needs to suffer now or our children and grandchildren will suffer much more later on.”
The first and biggest cuts should be across the board. Suck it up, Americans. Put your selfishness aside.
