The guy getting a thousand dollars from the government is going to squeal a hell of a lot more loudly if that is cut off than the taxpayers will appreciate the microscopic fraction of a cent they will save on that thousand dollars.

Unfortunately, there are many, many of these government recipients, at all economic levels and from all areas of the political spectrum. The result is a budget that is, in real CONSTANT dollars, currently over twice what it was when Jimmy Carter was president. Three times what is was in 1966. FOUR TIMES what is was in 1961.

In the same time period, the U.S. population went up by a factor of about 1.6. It hasn't even doubled.

Nobody can convince me that every nickel of the Federal budget is critical to the survival of the nation.

Each program has vocal defenders (this board has many fans of the space program, for example.) A politician can always pull up some poor victim that will suffer if the money is not spent, and get some air time.

As Dirksen supposedly said, "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

You can look through the budget in detail. You'd go blind or insane long before you finished. But almost everyone has a finger in the pie.

Once you have set up a system where it becomes possible for voters to vote money out of the Treasury for their own use, this is the inevitable result.