Imagine for a moment that you believed the only true role of the Federal government was to protect the country, everything was subservient to that one mission. The government was not a parent, did not exist to help you at all, that role was to be filled by your friends, family and maybe some local charities. It had no other responsibilities, none, not the environment, not your children's education, not labor laws, or health services, not urban development or energy policy and not transportation. Now extend that belief a bit and further imagine that you ran a government that provided all those services that you would absolutely love to make disappear. For various reasons you are unable to just close the departments dealing with all those things and send all the employees home.

How would you accomplish that goal? One strategy would be to spend the government to death, starving the programs to the point where you eliminated all but the most vital services, like national defense. You would force the government to use every other dollar of revenue to pay off the deficit that you "built." In addition you could pack departments with friends of big business, who were not only campaign contributors, but advocates of open markets, free enterprise, and no government regulations. They would act to undercut whatever rules and regulations existed.

If for example they didn't like the results of a particular study, they might cut funding, as they did with research into logging recently burnt forests in Oregon. If one of your programs was blocked in Congress you would surreptitiously put the program in the next year's budget anyway, thinking that you could force it on an unsuspecting country, like Social Security and private accounts.

Farfetched you say? I think not. Just take a look at this year's White House budget of $2.77 trillion. It increases the deficit by $423 billion and cuts or eliminates 141 programs. (NYT) Bush additionally proposes cutting $15 billion in cancer research, community policing and other areas while increasing the Pentagon budget 4.8%, or $439.3 billion, and that does not include new financing for Iraq and Afghanistan. There is more, but I think you get the idea.

In ten or fifteen years when folks complain about their taxes wondering where the money goes, make sure you remind them about how much is paying off the debt thanks to policies of our president. When the government says it has no money for the environment, or cancer research, or education, or training, or even body armor, think about this budget, this year.