A Government Whose Primary Function is Now Check Writing

Jim Geraghty brings us this item in the Morning Jolt email:  

NRO contributor Michael A. Walsh pops up in the pages of the New York Post, urging readers to "ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks?"

The feds now borrow 43 cents of every dollar they spend. Under Obama, outlays have soared to nearly a quarter of GDP (the historical average is just under 20 percent) -- and once ObamaCare starts to fully kick in around 2014, it will only rise.

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and debt interest consume -- at the moment -- nearly half of our $3.8 trillion budget. . . .

 Yet the president and the Democrats still refuse to put meaningful spending cuts on the table -- and refuse completely to deal with the entitlement monster. Even though they know the numbers don't work,they're trying to lock in Obama's sky-high spending as the new normal -- and then up the ante.

The debt-ceiling cage match is the culmination of the Democrats' 75-year-long fight to establish a voting bloc of dependents under the false flags of "compassion" and "social justice." It's sapped our strength, created a welfare mentality and, if unchecked, will reduce us to a nation of aging, resentful beggars with eyes cast permanently toward Washington.

The preamble to the Constitution talks about promoting the general welfare, not the welfare state. For the welfare state is incompatible with the rest of the preamble, which concludes: "and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." By definition, dependents are not free.

The numbers, as they stand now, simply don't work. We've had generations of congressmen make promises they knew eventually couldn't be kept and it's going to be up to this generation to fix it...or go broke.