It’s no secret that the American people are exhausted, disappointed and turned off by Congress. But consider this sentence, which helps to define the current wreckage that is the political landscape:
[F]or close to 15 years now, all major congressional actions have basically been giveaways.
This is just a fact. Republicans have given tax cuts and corporate subsidies with borrowed money. Democrats have given spending and benefits with borrowed money. Republicans and Democrats have agreed to spend even more on pet projects with borrowed money. (Sometimes programs are “paid for,” with new taxes and cuts offsetting new costs, but they all take place in the context of a federal budget that is decidedly not paid for.) And the giveaways will stop, eventually. As the Urban Institute’s Eugene Steuerle writes,
Now, even if you believe we need more temporary stimulus, the long-run budget is so out of whack that our newly elected officials must restore some sort of balance. That’s right, our elected officials must become tax collectors in the broadest sense of the word: they must ask us to give up something.
In other words, if you hate your government now, just wait a few more years. Read Steuerle’s column here.