Is it possible to 'sell' fiscal restraint to the American people?

I've written several times about the need to reduce the size of government and the amount it wastes on non-productive expenditures. It's a huge problem . . . and the biggest problem of all is that virtually no politicians (with a few honorable exceptions, of course) are willing to stick their necks out and speak the truth to the American people.

That truth is very simple: the United States of America is broke. We simply don't have enough money in our national budget to continue to pay entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, and welfare programs at their current level (never mind the growth that they're guaranteed under current legislation, which indexes many payments to the rate of inflation). The so-called 'Social Security trust fund' doesn't exist. Instead, politicians (from both major parties) have looted Social Security receipts as they came in, applying them to other Government programs, and leaving only a series of IOU's in the Social Security kitty. Now that Social Security payments exceed inflows, those IOU's are coming due, and there's no money in the general treasury to pay for them. That means we're going to have to devote an inordinate share of general taxation income, and a huge amount of borrowed money, to pay the benefits promised by these programs - money we don't have to spare.

Trouble is, many of our current politicians are the same people who looted Social Security in the past. They daren't own up to what they've done. They know that if they tell the American people what they've done, and the now-inevitable consequences of their actions, they haven't a hope of re-election . . . and they're addicted to power and the privileges of their positions. They'll cling to them at all costs, even if it means going on lying to those who elect them. Just look at Barney Frank and his shenanigans in Massachusetts as he tries to evade responsibility for the fiscal disaster at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He's the one who insisted that there was nothing wrong, that attempts to rein in those organizations were 'racist' - but now he's ducking and diving to avoid accepting any blame for the consequences of his actions.

John Stossel put it rather well in a recent article.

All that spending is taken from your and my pockets -- some in taxes, much in sneakier ways like government borrowing. The national debt -- now $13 trillion -- simply represents future taxes or the erosion of the dollar.

Yet progressives want us to pay more. One woman activist told our camera, "It costs to live in a civilized society, and we all need to pay our fair share."

Our "fair share" sounds good. Progressives say taking from the rich to help the poor is simply fair.

I put that to Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute.

"No, the fairest system is the one that rewards the makers in society as opposed to rewarding the takers in society."

Brooks wrote "The Battle," which argues that the fight between free enterprise and big government will shape our future.

"The way that our culture is moving now is toward more redistribution, toward more progressive taxation, exempting more people from paying anything, and loading more of the taxes onto the very top earners in our society."

But it seems "kind" to take it away from wealthier people and give it to those who need it more.

"Actually, it's not," Brooks says. "The government does not create wealth. It uses wealth that's been created by the private sector."

He warns that "Americans are in open rebellion today because the government is threatening to take us from a maker nation into taker nation status."

Americans in "open rebellion"? I'm skeptical. Handouts create fierce constituencies. The tea party movement is wonderful, but it takes strength to say no to government freebies. When I've said to tea partiers, "We should cut Medicare, eliminate agriculture subsidies, kill entire federal agencies," the enthusiasm usually fades from their eyes.

I hope that I am wrong and Brooks is right.

There's more at the link.

Who's going to have the guts to stand up and tell the American people, loud and clear, that their expectations concerning Social Security, Medicare and welfare cannot and will not be fulfilled? And how many of the American people will be prepared to face reality and 'bite the bullet', accepting the facts of the situation, rather than scream blue murder and vote for anyone who promises to drive this country further into bankruptcy in order to pay them what they want?

Robert A. Heinlein, speaking through his fictional character Lazarus Long, put it very succinctly.

"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."

Amen! Let's not forget, either, the warning of Alexis de Tocqueville, who spoke of democracy in this country more than a century and a half ago. This is what happens when government gets too big:

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

Amen once more! Double Amen! And today, will the American people have the guts to accept that the shepherd's got too big for his boots, and be willing to stand on their own two feet, and do without his largesse - even if it costs them personally?

Peter