Mandatorily entitled to deficits

Well, the Democrats have finally done it — welfare and debt service together are enough to put us in the red. Oh, they had plenty of help from progressive Republicans like Nixon and the Bush boys. But let’s face the simple fact that the relentless expansion of the welfare state has been the single-minded determination of the donkey party for a century now.

No need for a fancy military, foreign wars, an FBI, criminal courts or a border patrol to run up the federal debt. Nope. All we need is a modern welfare state and a stubborn refusal to live within our means — but I repeat myself.

So we’re now at the point where cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid simply must be made. Washington’s revenues no longer cover the vig. And how are the Democrats working to protect their precious welfare state from imminent collapse? Why, they’re decrying a nearly-meaningless cut of two-tenths of one percent as “extreme and indiscriminate.”

What’s extreme and indiscriminate is the welfare state’s appetite for spending and debt. And it will ruin this country if it isn’t tamed — sooner, we now know, rather than later.