It's time for a reality check ...

The last election was more about government spending than taxes

      Most people are okay with the amount of Federal taxes they now pay.  Certainly they don’t want them to go up, but that’s not really the issue. 

People are far more upset about how their taxes are wasted on what they perceive as useless programs and projects, especially those that seem to have no purpose except to appease some small constituency or some legislator’s buddies or district. 

Now “pork” is in the eye of the beholder; one man’s pork is another’s fulfillment of a need.  However, there’s a general perception that it’s way out of control.

One view is that the only way to stop the most egregious misuse of public money is to cut the flow of it to the government – essentially starving it into submission.  This strategy will never work as long as the government can print more money and sell more bonds. 

Another strategy is to “shrink” the size of government, which is promoted as a way of cutting costs and improving efficiency.  No one wants to admit this, but shrinking the government also inherently means cutting government jobs across the country, including those in legislators’ own districts… something unattractive to both parties.  For the Republicans, it adds to unemployment and makes them appear heartless and insensitive; for Democrats, it means a loss of public sector union jobs, an important political base. 

It also means cutting programs and agencies, which are the foundation of political empires and the back door ways of achieving political goals without the nuisance of public approval. 

A lot of Democrats are eager to cut defense spending, until they see that it means closing bases in their state, or reducing employment in their local industries.  Republicans are eager to cut departments they disagree with – like the departments of Energy, Education, and the EPA – but there are political consequences to cutting those, too. 

Nobody wants to cut the largest areas of expense – entitlement programs – although some are open to changes to restrain their growth.  Few currently in office are prepared to take the hard steps to reduce government spending, pork projects and earmarks and the population knows it. 

The revolution in the last election that threw out many long-term politicians was a message sent by voters that they may be ready for the hard choices, but hope different people will make better decisions on what to cut and where.