There is not one single government program, down to the smallest and most ridiculous, where you cannot point to someone and say, "This person will suffer if you cut this spending." That's what the government counts on. It's the "Little Billy" gambit. "If we cut off the funding for research into terminal nosepicking, Little Billy will surely die!" And of course, this will be true. There is somebody somewhere counting on every last dime of Federal spending, and somewhere there is a always the liberal media waiting to put that person on the nightly news.

But I don't judge programs that way.

What I look at is, "How long did we survive as a nation without this government program? Was there a real problem that it solved, or just some hyped-up issue? Does most of the money go to end uses or bureaucracy? Does the existence of this program depend on the existence of the problem the program is supposed to solve? Does this program exist because a Senator wants the money in his state? Does anyone pay any attention to whether or not the program is actually DOING anything?

We are spending twice as much Federal money, adjusted for inflation, as we did in 1979. Oddly, the United States seemed to be functioning pretty much back then the way it is now. What's changed?

Nobody sees the people on the news who might get to keep a bit more of their own life's earnings if the budget was a bit smaller. Nobody sees the people who might find a loan a bit easier if the U.S. wasn't borrowing money to make ends meet.

"Raise taxes! Raise them some more! Double the budgets for the programs. Surely they'll finally work if they just get enough money! Say, let's have the government pay for all the health care while we're at it!"

Cut spending? Forget it. You can't even cut the rate of growth without politicians and special interests having a cow.