Requiring everyone to buy medical insurance (whether they want it or not);
Handing out taxpayer "cash for clunkers;"
Bailing out banks, auto companies, state governments, mortgage holders and just about anyone who wants to be on the dole, or stay on the dole;
Handing out stimulus checks;
Driving up taxpayer liabilities and debt;
Building another overpriced, unnecessary school or library;
Raising the sales tax, property taxes, "sin" taxes, and meals and hotel taxes.
So where in this laundry list are any proposals to even so much as tweak the spending of our Defense Department. This year, DOD will spend $ 685.1 billion a figure that's doubled over the past decade. And Pentagon-watchers will tell you unequivocally that at least a third of that is total waste. That waste comes to a very large chunk of cash. And Bob Gates seems to be the only person around who's concerned.
There is no doubt that our government is chockablock with programs that don't work, with inefficiencies that drive up costs, with expensive "carve-outs" for this or that favored industry or company, and with thousands of "earmarks" that move stealthily through the system and have the enormous benefit of keeping their sponsors in office for another term.
Of course there's a need for the kind of fiscal soundness commission that Senate Republicans proposed and than voted against. Where were all those dedicated small government devotees when the votes were cast? On the wrong side of history.
Fact is that our country is undergoing a huge demographic and cultural change, and change is scary to a lot of folks who need someone to blame and find Government a convenient scapegoat. That's the wave being ridden today by crazy-as-a-fox demagogues like Sarah Palen and Glenn Beck.
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