Tom, do some real work instead of just quoting conservative source, and calculate how much other costs of running a country would increase if suddenly there were no health care benefits for our elderly and Social Security accounts were removed. Tell me honestly what would happen to all these people. I assume you'd still want police and fire protection handled by the state and I'd say it's pretty much certain that as people fall into absolute financial ruin because of lack of health care and retirement funds, that chaos will rise across the land. Costs for protecting yourself from the walking destitute will probably jump up just a tad don't you think? Oh the heck with it. Fire and police protection are social programs. The truly responsible will just fend off the bad guys on their own.

Well, we could probably minimize the damage a bit by getting rid of the laws requiring hospital emergency rooms to treat all that enter. We don't want those increased costs to do in all the rest of us "responsible" folks.

Oh, and why not finish the task Bush began and stop all funding of public schools. That's obviously a state responsibility. I'm sure Utah would do just fine converting all those schools into little Mormon indoctrination centers.

Food and Drug Administration? Sounds social to me. Let's just dump them. Nothing in the Constitution about protecting our food supply.

Department of the Interior? Socialism if I ever saw it. Let's just sell off Yosemite and Yellowstone to the highest bidder. Huge profits for the country there.

Look, there are social programs that are excessive but the ones that take up the bulk of our budget aren't the worst of the bunch. Those things are the cost of doing business, of enjoying life in a complex and diverse nation that gives you huge advantages over most other people in the world.

You rail and rail about these costs but have nothing, null, zilch, zero about how to deal with the crater full of desperate and in most cases innocent people you'll leave behind. So until you have something other than this vaporware of "trickle down economics" that's failed miserably, why don't you give it a rest. This country pumped out child after child during the baby boom and then a few decades later started getting more responsible about the number of kids a family should have. So now we're top-heavy with the elderly and face this perfect storm of too many people to take care of and not enough resources. Responsible people bite the bullet, sacrifice their excessive wealth, and find ways to make it work without resorting to some hybrid of the Soylent Green scenario where we just wash our hands of our responsibility to our elders and look out for ourselves.

Every scenario I can imagine where we shrink government just results in additional costs popping up elsewhere while our quality of life deteriorates immensely. Any chart you can come up with completely ignores those hidden costs. It reminds me of when the snake oil salesmen come into a jurisdiction telling the local government that they must build some huge stadium for a professional sports team. Their facts and figures always show that the profits and sales tax revenues will more than pay back the city for the construction costs. In reality it's a scam. The only people that profit are the team owners and whoever's getting the construction kickbacks. By the time the arena's falling down and ready for replacement, the area around it has turned into a ghetto and the infrastructure and support costs have far exceeded whatever tax might have been generated.

It's the same thing with shrinking the government. It's a scam that ignores the fact that the government is really us. Only a tiny percent of "them" are the fat cat bureaucrats you scream about. The vast majority are just folks that work like all the rest of us. Their salaries go to the markets in their neighborhoods. They pay mortgages and taxes. They serve on school PTA's. Most of the money that goes into the programs goes right back to the community it came from in either services, wages, infrastructure improvements, etc. It's not just thrown away. It doesn't just vanish into thin air. In a perfect world it wouldn't have to route through Washington to get to the local workers but unfortunately, if we left it up to the states, we'd still have slavery in some areas.

I saw my share of waste working with the government but I also saw some damned fine and efficient workers.

Social programs are not communism Tom. Just keep saying that over and over to yourself. Maybe it might sink in.

Art