We all know why these programs will never be cut: because the people love them. Everyone who gets a check from Uncle Sugar (or who works for him) wants the other guy’s budget zeroed out, but not his own. Why,without the services of [insert your constituents' largest employer here] America itself would grind to a halt!
Guarding your constituents’ rice bowls is what congressmen do — those that want to get elected, anyway. Nobody ever got sent to Washington for promising to do away with their district’s federal jobs. We all know what it looks like when fedgov leaves and takes its payroll away. Remember base closures? What happened to Hoochville when they closed Fort William Calley? Instant ghost town, that’s what…
The only way any of this will ever end is by collapse. The system will have to crash and be rebooted from scratch. (Note to would-be revolutionaries: any attempt to “crash” the system deliberately will create more problems than it solves.) No, I’m afraid that all we can do is hang on and wait for the Gods of the Copybook Headings to limp up and explain it again.
(Besides, can you imagine what would happen if the welfare checks and AFDC and WIC funding and grandma’s Social Security deposits just… stopped? We’d all find out real quick what “post-racial America” is really like. Tripoli would look like a toddler’s play date by comparison!)
