One of my maxims is Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. Of course that is just one side of the fact that government programs cannot work because you can never cut them.
Why? Because all government spending is loot and plunder, goodies handed out to the supporters of the regime. No different from the jolly old Vikings. And one thing that supporters of the regime demand is that their checks never be reduced, or, God forbid, taken away.
So when House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) went on TV recently he advocated for cutting down the cost of the reconciliation bill by shortening how long some of the programs in the bill will be in place, because once a program is in place, it will “be difficult to take it away.”
You know when you turn the shelf life of something and reduce the number here, let’s say make a five-year plan rather than a ten-year plan, you know very well that it’s very hard to get rid of these programs that ever are initiated five years out. So, you know that you’ll get your way anyway in that event. Because whatever you get, it’s something that’s hard to take away when they expire, right?”
Is Rep. Clyburn right, or is he right?
He's right until the federal government can't pay its bills. Then the only question becomes will the government start cutting programs or will it just inflate them away with Money Printer Go Brrrrrr.
And that is why Republican voters are always pissed off at their representatives because they have no spine. Cut all these useless programs, we say. Why don't you cut Obamacare? Why don't you cut welfare? Why don't you cut health care for illegal immigrants?
But not Social Security and Medicare, the primary programs for average middle-class people. Heavens no!
Of course, every government program that ever lived has always been justified by its usefulness, its justice, its diversity, its anti-racism, its equity. But all that is really lipstick on a pig. The only thing that matters is handing out stuff to your supporters.
And this really illustrates the utter moral bankruptcy of our liberal ruling class. For all the pretty talk, what they want is to stay in power, and whether they know it or not, the key to staying in power is to offer goodies at the next election.
And I say that every new program ends up Making Things Worse. And more Unjust as well.
Let's go through the programs in historical order.
Education (est. $1.3 trillion in 2020) was supposed to raise the people up. And drive crime down. That's what Horace Mann told us in the 1840s. Well, now it is just a jobs program for unionized supporters of the regime, and more and more does less and less actual education and more and more indoctrination of ruling-class ideology, as in Critical Race Theory. So government education Makes Things Worse.
Social Security ($1.1 trillion in 2020) was supposed to be a fully funded insurance program. But in fact it is just a transfer program from workers to retirees. If it had been a genuine savings program then the savings of the retirees would be creating jobs for workers. And people would retire when they could afford to -- in other words when their savings had created enough jobs for the young'uns to pay their pension.Oh, and get this: retirees would often have wealth to hand down to their children! But, in fact, Social Security will run out of money and then they will either raise taxes on workers, cut pensions on retirees (probably by raising taxes on Social Security payments), or just inflate pensions away. So government Social Security Makes Things Worse.
Medicare (gross $0.92 trillion in 2020) has always been funded mostly by the federal income tax. So it means that rich people subsidize middle-class health care and end-of-life care. Frankly, I'd prefer it if the middle class paid our own health care, and if the rich earned brownie points by helping those who cannot-afford-health-care-through-no-fault-of-their-own. But the main thing would be to have health care not be government-regulated stem-to-stern. Because "regulatory capture," dontcha know. Yes, but whatabout "end of life" health care? Well, don't look now but the experts and the bureaucrats and the scientists are busy stitching up Medicare to make sure that grandma doesn't cost too much at end of life -- as in Medicare Hospice, which in my experience is a conveyor belt to the graveyard. So government Medicare Makes Things Worse
And so on.
But here is my secret hope. I hope that the lefty progressives from Sen. Sanders to Rep. Clyburn to Rep. Cortez are overstepping the mark. I hope that they are making ordinary Americans so mad that the ordinary Americans will elect a Congress and a President to go ahead and repeal everything done during the Biden administration. Just because Let's Go Brandon!
But I realize that I am dreaming of a world that will never be.
But what is life without its dreams and fantasies?
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