Smaller Government

Ron Brownstein, writing for National Journal, does a relatively even handed discussion of the amount of cuts in government services it will take to bring government spending down to the level of government revenues. It ain't pretty and we won't like it. This is the key data:

Since the 1970s, federal spending has averaged about 21 percent of the nation’s economic output, and federal revenue has averaged about 18 percent, with deficits making up the difference.

In other words, we have been spending on government 116% of what we've collected in taxes. That 16% overage we've borrowed, first from Japan and more recently from China.

You know what happens to a family that lives like this for several years, let alone 40 years. Their plastic gets overloaded and they spend a lot of their income servicing the debt (a fancy way of saying "paying interest").

It is what's happened to the American family, all 308 million of us. We've been living beyond our means and it has to stop.