If a Republican president can’t address a Republican-controlled Congress without paying lip service to the idea of cutting spending, what good are Republicans?

Glenn Reynolds has a good answer. 

Okay, a few points, starting with the fact that I actually do care about the debt.

But the demise of the Tea Party movement showed that nobody much in DC cares, in either party. “Lip service” is the most we’ve ever gotten, and not even that when there was even a hint of danger that it might actually be taken seriously.

I think that we simply can’t address the debt, barring an immediate crisis too big to finagle our way out of it, under our current political arrangements. I think Trump may be helpful here not because he cares about the debt — he doesn’t, or, if he does, he realizes that there’s nothing that can be done under existing political arrangements — but because he offers some hope of disrupting current political arrangements. Until those arrangements are disrupted, or the bottom drops out of U.S finances, nothing much can be done.

Alternative take: In 2012 with Mitt Romney, America had a chance at a turnaround artist, and it passed. In 2016, we elected Trump. And his expertise is different.

First we have to change the culture in Washington.

Trump does what people want. Outrage ensues.

Trump made a deal with Democrats to fund hurricane disaster relief and raise the debt ceiling. “Never Trumpers” of every Party and label are shocked. He is being called names by his enemies and his supporters are accused of being duped by a Democrat in disguise.

But step back for a moment and ignore, if you can, all the rabid voices. Ask yourself what so many people who are not particularly partisan have asked of politicians in Washington. They want to see politicians get along and do things for the common good.

So here we have it. Money has been appropriated for disaster relief. The debt ceiling has been raised. It’s a two-fer. Who, except for partisans, want to see Congress tied up in gridlock, fail to pass disaster aid and wrangle until the very last moment in that perennial fight over raising the debt ceiling?

You know the debt ceiling will be raised; it always is. The only question is whether the Republicans will be accused of shutting down the government. The news stories were already written about the “horror” of the Government defaulting on the national debt. Now the Democrats and the Press – but I repeat myself – will have to put their stories and faux outrage back in the pending file for the next time this issue comes up. The best thing that could happen with the debt ceiling is to remove it. Get rid of an issue that only allows politicians to pretend to care, to posture and preen in a Kabuki theater that has gotten so old it’s grown a beard. 

Stop it already. We know you’re lying. Clear the decks for issues that matter. Grow up.

Reply to Bud and his death wish.

Bud Norman writes a blog called Central Standard Times.  I shared some thoughts with him.

Why do some fringe brands of Conservative have a death wish?  I mean that in a figurative sense of course, since this death wish manifests itself only during an election.  But Bud here is a great example.  When I began reading him I found a conventional Republican with a talent for droll humor.  But as the election cycle heated up the inner maniac showed up.  We’re now past he point where Bud’s Hail May passes miss the receiver and he realizes that third party candidates are not going to be the next President.  But we still hear the lonely laments that the Republican does not act like the standard issue M1A1 Republican loser. 

Here’s an outstanding example of the #NeverTrump mindset as it demands that the Republican nominee cut his throat in the town square at high noon. 

“Neither candidate seems at all concerned about the nation’s unaffordable debt, much less expressed a willingness to address the entitlement programs that is driving it…”

Of course that sentence is nonsense on two levels.  No one this side of an insane asylum expects the Democrat to do anything but ignore the national debt – or blame it on Bush as Obama did.  And the Democrat is guaranteed to fatten current entitlement spending and invent new entitlements.  In fact, “free” college education is part of the Democrat platform.  So Bud’s not really being honest with his readers when he talks about “neither candidate.”  He’s talking about Trump.

He’s demanding that Trump run on the Scrooge platform.  He’s demanding that Trump spend the campaign telling people how if he’s elected he’s going to cut Social Security and Medicare and take food out of the mouths of starving orphans and widows.  And lest anyone accuse me of hyperbole, keep in mind that during the 2012 elections the Republican ticket was shown throwing a wheelchair-bound grandmother off a cliff.

There are ways of solving our deficit spending problem; ways of making this country and its people less dependent of government and more independent in every way.  The last time the budget was near balance was because the economy was growing fast enough that tax receipts actually kept up with spending. 

But first you have to get elected.  And you do that by appealing to people’s emotions. 

Republicans have been doing that for decades by promising their constituents fiscal frugality and loosening the bonds of government.  And when they get into office they deliver goodies to the people who bankrolled them while lying to the rubes that they didn’t have to votes to cut spending.

Democrats have an easier path to bribing their voters and supporters: they just tell them right out that they’re going to pass out free stuff from the cornucopia that’s the federal treasury.   How’s this for an appeal to the youth of the nation – and their cash strapped parents?  “Wanna spend four years partying at State College?  Elect us and we’ll pay the bill.”

So this election is not going to be about who’s Scrooge and who’s Santa Claus.  It’s a battle between a sick, corrupt woman who’s expecting to ride into office on the coattails of her husband, and a political novice who’s vanquished the corrupt, lying Republican establishment with the promise of Making America Great Again. 

I think the novice will win.  

Trump Courts Evangelical Vote at Regent University

Some excerpts:

Trump spoke before a packed theater at Regent University as part of the university's Executive Leadership Presidential Candidate Forums series.

On the debt:

"We owe $19 trillion -- most people don't even know what a trillion dollars is, how many hundreds of millions is in a trillion," Trump said. "It's such a number that, it's a name that 10 years ago you never even heard the word trillion, but we owe $19 trillion."

"A very bad budget was passed just about four weeks ago that's going to add at least $2 trillion to it. So we'll be up essentially to $21 trillion, and at a certain point it's really the point of no return. And you really have to have somebody that knows what he or she is doing,"

On the Supreme Court:

Robertson wanted to know if President Trump would have a litmus test for those he'd nominate to the Supreme Court.

"In your selection as president, what criteria would you use to pick somebody?" he asked.

"Pro-life. We want-- It starts with that, starts with it. A very conservative, a very, very smart, I mean like Judge (Antonin) Scalia would be a perfect He was a perfect representative," 

On Obamacare:

"We're going to get rid of Obamacare," .... "Obamacare has turned out to be a total disaster."

$20 trillion man: National debt nearly doubles during Obama presidency

When Mr. Obama took over in January 2009, the total national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. That means the debt will have very nearly doubled during his eight years in office, and there is much more debt ahead with the abandonment of “sequestration” spending caps enacted in 2011.

Gaining From a Bad Deal...?

The headline is Bud Norman's; the question mark is mine.

I like Bud Norman; he’s conservative, witty, and a good writer. But like most of us he has a tendency to fool himself on occasion by managing to hold two contradictory ideas in his head at once. In the present instance, Republicans who convinced themselves that capitulating on the debt ceiling would be a small positive for the party hold two contradictory ideas about the voting public. The first is that “A crucial percentage of voters pay too little attention to politics to hear these arguments [about the crushing federal debt], and even if the arguments were to somehow sneak into the news accounts that occasionally interrupt the average uninformed American’s day he would likely be unmoved.”

The reason is that the Democrats in the media will amplify the imaginary horrors of a government shut-down and ramp up talk of a default. And that’s true. But then they believe that “ the majority of Republican congressman who opposed the deal will be able to remind their conservative voters that they at least voted “no.” The Democrats won’t have another unpopular showdown to blame on the Republicans, and they’ll still be remembered as the party that promised you could keep your health care plan if you liked it and then cancelled the policy and forced you to pay more money for one covering things you don’t want or need.”

So come election day those same voters will become astute students of the issues, blame Democrats for all the country’s problems and pull the lever for the Republicans. Oh, and in the meantime, those same voters will be told about the great things that ObamaCare is doing for them, including their new-found ability to break the shackles of work, being able to follow their dreams with government health care, ObamaPhones, SNAP cards and government housing.

I certainly hope that Bud Norman and the Republicans in congress who believe that endless retreat is the way that wars are won are right, but I’m not at all sure that they are. The Russians managed to pull that stunt on Napoleon several centuries ago, but they had the assistance of nature. At the end of the day, you can retreat only so far and then you’re out of both space and time. I’m not persuaded that waiting for the crash will be the beginning of a renewed American Republic. In other times and other places that’s often the time when the proverbial Man on Horseback makes his appearance.

Lots of good stuff on twitter

“None of You [Reporters] Were Math Majors, Were You?”

Via Powerline

Default hysteria continues in Washington, in defiance of the most basic facts of arithmetic. Some Republicans have even been taken in, but one who is having none of it is Congressman David Schweikert of Arizona, the former treasurer of Maricopa County:

“You and I can find ways the game-playing has been done,” said Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, the former treasurer of Maricopa County. “You don’t get to have those debates and discussions if you have the administration able to game-play with the trust funds.”

Another reporter asked Schweikert to respond to some doom-saying quotes from Chinese bankers. “I lay this at the steps of the administration and Jack Lew,” said the congressman. “The unconscionable, unacceptable use of language, the word ‘default,’ when the borrowing we need for 2014 is we’re 16 percent short on revenue. To use the word ‘default,’ to scare the markets—are politics really that important to this administration that it ignores basic math?”

Schweikert ticked off ways that he, as a county treasurer, had sought balance. “The basic repo desk, running your ladders on your debt—it’s stunning that the politicians in the administration care more about keeping this as a wedge than the international markets. Even Geithner made it clear that he had the ability to prioritize…. [T]here is no such thing as default unless there is an actual evil attempt from the administration. When you have 18 percent of GDP coming in in cash, less than 2 percent going out in debt coverage—I’m stunned you all fall for it in the press. None of you were math majors, were you?”

Forgive me if I have not written about default before, but I can't help but notice that when the Obama administration uses the term "default" it loses its meaning. Default is not paying the interest on your debt. It doesn't mean that you can't go out for your usual Friday night dinner at a fancy restaurant.  But that's how Team Obama defines it.

Debt Doubles Since Obama

DEBT DOUBLES SINCE OBAMA...
Campaign accuses GOP of 'treason'...
Boehner: 'If Ands Or Buts Were Candy And Nuts, Then Every Day Would Be Christmas'...

Death benefits not paid to fallen soldiers families

 

The MSM  and the conservative media are treating the scandal very differently. 

 

To read about the story in the MSM, the Pentagon had no choice about withholding payment of the death benefit from the grieving families and denying them a plane ride to Dover AFB to meet the bodies  of the soldiers killed in battle.  It seems that some unknown entity we'll call "Mr. Government Closer" found a rule that said that death benefits can't be paid, but that the Pentagon can keep the military golf course open so that President Obama can play.  Of course nobody told Obama anything, he has to wait to read about it in the Washington Post.  And of course, when Commander-in-Chief Obama found out what the Obama Pentagon had done he went right to work ordering his Pentagon to find a way.  What a guy! 

 

Of course the reality is 180 degrees from this fairy tale.  The Obama administration wanted to create the maximum pain on the American people to pressure the House of Representatives to cave in to all the Obama demands.  These include absolutely no changes in that train wreck called ObamaCare (except what Obama decrees) and a blank check with no limits on all future government spending.  

 

So how can we cause the American people pain while blaming it on the Tea Party?  If that meant closing the open-air World War 2 Memorial and the Viet Nam Memorial that was one way.  If it meant closing the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore, that was another.  If it meant turning young cancer patients away form the NIH and refusing to consider a bill passed by the House to keep it open, that was third.  If it meant not paying the widows and orphans of the dead, that was a fourth.  The list of petty and vindictive actions taken by Team Obama is much longer than this, but they will do to show the nature of the people at the top. 

 

This is the group that has the full throated support of the MSM who tell us that we should be blaming the Republicans and the Tea Party because they can make all this pain go away if only they would give in.  And it's true, you can always make the torturers stop if you give them what they want.  But make no mistake about who's inflicting the pain and the nature of the people who choose to deny aging veterans access to their memorials, families the right to see their parks and grieving families the right to meet their dead heroes and collect the pittance that is due them.   Make no mistake that when you hear how this is all the fault of the Tea Party, just keep in mind that the House of Representatives has passed bills to fund all of these activities, but Harry Reid won't let them pass in the Senate and Obama promises to veto them.   

Worse Is the New Normal - By Design

Mark Steyn replies to a comment made by a reader:

an exasperated reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to be stupid.” That’s to say, Western democracies and their citizens are the wealthiest societies ever known, and no matter how much of our energies are wasted on pointless hyper-regulation for the business class and multigenerational welfare for the dependency class and Transgender and Colonialism Studies for our glittering youth, we can afford it, and the central fact of our wealth will ensure that our fortunes do not change.

But we live in a world which is actually very carefully balanced on a precipice. We may be wealthy, fat, living in McManions. But the modern world around us is actually much more than simply assemblies of brick, wood and metal. It’s a finely tuned system that’s very vulnerable to disruption. Let the power go off for a few days or weeks and you quickly find that you can’t cook. Let the time expand to a few months and you run out of food because there is no transportation, no refrigeration, no light or heat, not “health care” system. High rise buildings become uninhabitable to the average urban dweller. It’s at that point that you realize that all the gadgets that make our lives what they are become useless lumps of metal and plastic little more use than the raw material from which they were formed. It’s at that point that the people who are most likely to survive are the naked nomadic herdsmen you once saw pictured in National Geographic magazine, if they actually still exist.

Steyn concludes:

Obama’s pointless, traceless super-spending is now (as they used to say after 9/11) “the new normal.” Nancy Pelosi assured the nation last weekend that everything that can be cut has been cut and there are no more cuts to be made. And the disturbing thing is that, as a matter of practical politics, she may well be right. Many people still take my correspondent’s view: If you have old money well managed, you can afford to be stupid — or afford the government’s stupidity on your behalf. If you’re a social-activist celebrity getting $20 million per movie, you can afford the government’s stupidity. If you’re a tenured professor or a unionized bureaucrat whose benefits were chiseled in stone two generations ago, you can afford it. If you’ve got a wind farm and you’re living large on government “green energy” investments, you can afford it. If you’ve got the contract for signing up Obamaphone recipients, you can afford it.

But out there beyond the islands of privilege most Americans don’t have the same comfortably padded margin for error, and they’re hunkering down. Obamacare is something new in American life: the creation of a massive bureaucracy charged with downsizing you — to a world of fewer doctors, higher premiums, lousier care, more debt, fewer jobs, smaller houses, smaller cars, smaller, fewer, less; a world where worse is the new normal. Would Americans, hitherto the most buoyant and expansive of people, really consent to live such shrunken lives? If so, mid-20th-century America and its assumptions of generational progress will be as lost to us as the Great Ziggurat of Ur was to 19th-century Mesopotamian date farmers.

George Orwell, after attending a meeting of impoverished but passive miners, remarked sadly that “there is no turbulence left in England.” The Democrats, and much of the Republican establishment, have made a bet that there is no turbulence left in America, and the citizenry will stand mute before Obamacare’s wrecking ball. Unless they’re willing to accept a worse life for their children and grandchildren, middle-class Americans need to prove them wrong.

It takes a lot to destroy a nation as big and wealthy as ours.  But the very things that have made us wealthy have created vulnerabilities that most people are as unaware of as were the people who boarded those jet planes on 9/11/2001 and failed to live till the end of the day. 

No Accounting for Government

It appears that the government has not increased the debt by even one penny for s full month despite running through $98 billion in new spending (and that doesn't include the millions spent on the Obama vacation).

Bud Norman:

This is hard to account for, as one would expect that a debt to go up or down by at least some miniscule amount over the course of 31 days, and in the case of a government that ran a $98 billion deficit during the same period of time it would be expected to go up by approximately $98 billion, but government accountants seem to have a knack for hard accounting. Their efforts have somehow kept the debt stuck just $25 million below the legal debt limit, conveniently preventing the government from being in violation of its own laws, and that is rather precise work. After all, $25 million is a just a tick or two on the national debt clock, a relatively piddling sum that the president can blow through in just a few vacation days, so they’re cutting it awfully close.

If Jack Lew at the Treasury can keep the debt precisely $25 million below the legal limit for a month, perhaps he can do it forever and solve the spending problem without getting either Obama or Congress involved.

Why I Like Ted Cruz - again

First, They Came For The Cypriots...

Via Investors Business Daily

Rule Of Law: Markets tumbled after Cyprus and the EU said they might tax private bank accounts to pay for a bailout. Arbitrary property grabs are a new low and a bad precedent in this crisis. Worse still, it can happen here.

As bad as tumbling markets around the world are, they seem to be the only signal strong enough to catch the attention of Europe's otherwise unaccountable bureaucrats who have long since learned to ignore street riots.

As stocks fell from Tokyo to New York, Europe's leaders are scrambling to say they had nothing to do with the cause — the shutdown of all Cyprus banks and ATMs for at least three days and the expropriation of a large chunk of each now-captive account, as a "tax" to pay for Cyprus' $13 billion EU bailout, Europe's fifth.

It appears that Cypriot banks made very bad investment decisions costing them billions. Without a bailout they will go bankrupt. So the EU demands that the Cypriot government confiscate a large part of every saver's account in return for enough money to bail out the banks.

Which teaches everyone a valuable lesson. The government can do anything to you if you can't defend yourself. Banks accounts are not safe from government confiscation. Neither are any other accounts held by any other financial institution and not held by you personally.

Suddenly the Second Amendment and stuff under your mattress become increasingly important.

Already Congressional Democrats are plotting the expropriation of Americans' private 401(k) and IRA retirement savings accounts in favor of "a guaranteed income." If bank accounts can be casually expropriated in Cyprus to pay for big-spending governments and bailouts, there is no reason a nice slice of the $19 trillion in retirement accounts can't get the same treatment.

If it happens, it will signal the end of individual freedom and the return of feudalism.

Frederick Hayek had a phrase for this: "The Road To Serfdom." Let's hope there will be more than just markets to make this state theft of private property stop.

From Glenn Reynolds:

Like I said, an enterprising GOP member of the House or Senate would introduce a bill immediately to make such shenanigans illegal — and dare the Dems to oppose it.

This is a golden opportunity for Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.

The Cull

Gerard Vanderleun knows how to fix the fiscal crisis.  Bailing Out The Tomb Boomers: "There's gold in them thar grannies."

Money, money, money. That's all you hear these days. Hundreds of billions, working on a trillion. Banks need a bailout. Cars need a bailout. Housing needs a bailout. You need a bailout. I need a bailout. Even President Obama needs a bailout from his bailout. Everywhere you go we're tapped out, busted, broke. Let's face it, we need money. It's time for tough choices and tougher love.

Where, oh where, shall this money be found? It is to be found, it would seem, far out on the ocean of the future dead center in the Sargasso Sea of debt. But why borrow from the future when you can simply liquidate under-performing assets in the present? Isn't it better to turn useless stuff you've got just lying around into cash than to take on new debt? Especially if a lot of the new debt is going to pay off the old debt? Of course it is.

The rush to borrow from the future ignores some very tangible assets here at home that could be used to give us all, citizens and government alike, a very nice hit from the money machine.

Traveling through Florida, as I have been for some weeks, you see these underutilized assets all about you. They are everywhere, like rich, virgin topsoil ready to be planted and then harvested. What's more, harvesting these assets to put some real money into circulation does not go against the core values of the ruling Democratic majority. It merely extends them to the logical conclusion. Like the culling of the herd before birth through the use of abortion to get the nonproductive out of the way before they can consume resources, it is time our older citizens -- far past their usefulness, their productive years, but likely to consume lots of resources for decades to come -- were, quite simply, liquidated.

Yes, it's time for mom and pop and granny and grandpop to go. All 37 million of them must be transformed from codger to compost if the American dream is not to become a new-age nightmare. It's time for a government program from coast to coast to make sure that every American over the age of 65 takes one for the team -- in the form of a government approved and delivered .22 bullet in the back of the head.

Read the whole thing. Think of the advantages!  I especially like this part (very creative)

A third benefit is a jobs program right here and right now. And for the disadvantaged as well.

It might take some training to teach an urban youth basic skills such as "showing up on time for work" since they have only had eight to twelve years of expensive education, but it takes none at all to have urban youth sneak up on grandpa and "bust a cap in his skanky ass." This new class of SSa worker allows us to put jobs, paying jobs, that the worker already knows how to do on the street tomorrow. "A hit tomorrow = a pay check Friday" should be the new slogan of the Obama Works Administration (OWA!).

 

Johnathan Swift, eat your heart out.

Where is the US economy headed? Here's Peter Schiff's opinion..

From Patterico's Pontifications

Here’s a clip of a bunch of people laughing at Peter Schiff in 2006 and 2007 when he predicted that the housing bubble was about to burst, financial stocks were going to take a tumble, and we were headed into a recession:

"Peter Schiff says the Fed's bubble machine is destroying the American economy and he is right. Zero interest rates and QE are crushing savers, rewarding speculators and enabling the Washington politicians to issue endless debt. Every concerned citizen should read this."-- David Stockman; Former OMB director under President Ronald Reagan

Virginian Pilot claims $430 million isn't real money.

The rambling incoherence of the people who write editorials for the Virginian Pilot has broken through the bounds of time and space to finally arrive in a completely new universe. A universe where the $430 million government subsidy to PBS is actually nothing, nada, zero. A universe where NOT SPENDING $430 million that we don’t have will have NO EFFECT on the federal deficit!

Don’t believe me? Allow me to quote two lines from this editorial that is so mind-blowingly stupid that reading it will make destroy your brain cells:

 

Public broadcasting has nothing to do with the federal deficit. …. Eliminating PBS can't erase the deficit.

How did we get to trillion dollar deficits? The same way that individuals get into debt, by buying things that are beyond their means because they want them. By ignoring the consequences of endless “programs” to fix every ”problem” that the mind of Liberal man and woman can invent to fill their empty hours.

 

You can hear the same reasoning going through the mind of the man who’s maxing out three credit cards, no savings, and a million dollars in debt as he heads into Starbucks for a $4 latte. “Since $4 is small compared to my debt, why not buy it; maybe I should also spend $2.50 on a brioche.”   Using Virginian Pilot reasoning, why not?  And by the way, buy that Porche you've been wanting. 

The editorial cites Medicare and Social Security as the twin evils that threaten to consume the nation. But you can bet that on the occasion that someone like Paul Ryan makes a proposal to fix those programs for people who are at least a decade away from retirement the same gang of morons (with my apologies to the “differently abled”) will go on the attack against any and all structural changes.

 

Of course this editorial isn’t really about money, it’s part of the MSM’s desperate defense of Barack Obama. It’s their attempt to save a regime that indulges in extravagance when the country is plunging over a fiscal cliff.

 

Of course they could always cite rapid economic growth under Obama, except that there isn't any.  The anemic growth the country has experienced is actually slowing.

 

They could cite the jobs picture under the present regime except that the jobs picture is so bad that more people are giving up and dropping out of the labor force than are finding jobs. The way that government statistics work, if everyone stops looking for work the unemployment rate drops to zero.

 

They could cite the foreign successes of the Obama administration but the murders in Libya and the attacks on our embassies across the globe makes that claim laughable.

 

So the Virginian Pilot, like President Zero, is reduced to talking about Big Bird.

It’s no wonder that Romney has taken the lead in the polls. Even those polls that over-sample Democrats.   Even bird brains outside of the Pilot's editorial offices are finally getting it. 

Obama 2009: "I Am Pledging To Cut The Deficit We Inherited By Half By The End Of My First Term In Office"

Promises make, promises kept.  Otherwise a good speech, though.  Note the ping-ping speaking style.

Epic Santelli Rant On 'Un-American' Federal Reserve/Treasury Incompetence

Rick Santelli

I don’t watch the Sunday news shows because I’m often in church when they’re on. But the biggest reason is that they focus on the frivolous. Thirty minutes of propagandists sitting around a table mouthing a combination of lies and platitudes designed to distract the views from the things that are important. And it’s not just because they people who stage these weekly shows are stupid partisans, it’s because they are afraid of angering the powerful people who can destroy their careers, make their lives miserable or put them in jail. People like Tim Geithner who controls the IRS and Eric Holder who controls the FBI, and ultimately Barack Obama who controls them all.

Food Stamps and the $41 Cake

From The Wall Street Journal

There is a large chain grocery store in my neighborhood that I rarely frequent because the prices are too high. Instead, I will travel an extra 30 blocks to another store where the costs per item are 20%-30% lower.




I arrange my travel around this activity. It takes a little extra effort, but within a year the savings are substantial. As it turns out, I am not alone. The average income of Costco discount shoppers, it was reported recently, is $96,000—so perhaps they're not the millionaires and billionaires the president talks about, yet not the folks one might immediately expect to be watching their pennies either.



But every so often I will need one item late at night—a quart of milk, a missing part of a school lunch—and I run over to the high-price store nearby. There, I've noticed something happening with increased regularity: The person ahead of me in line or at the next checkout counter is using a benefits card. Since we are now in the third year of our national recession and unemployment remains depressingly high, I understand this.



Recently I had to run into that store and, sizing up the three lines, chose to stand behind a woman with one item in her cart. It was one of those large ice-cream cakes. When the checkout person said "Forty-one dollars," I wasn't the only one who blanched. The shopper's son, around 12, repeated it as a question: "Forty-one dollars?"



I quickly calculated that the woman's cake was eight times more expensive than the kind I make at home to celebrate birthdays. The mother ignored her son's question.



She took out her benefits card, swiped it through the machine, and they were off. My turn.



I stood there, wondering what lesson the young boy takes away from this transaction. Does he grow up with the faintest understanding of delayed gratification—that you have to earn your money before you can buy candy—or, in this case, an ice-cream treat? I wondered how we arrived at this point as a nation. I also felt like a chump.


The vast majority of Americans—Democrat, Republican or independent—will readily help someone who cannot make ends meet in a bad economy. Americans want a hungry child to be fed. I know this because in no other country do people donate more to charities. Americans will go far beyond what our taxes already pay for to help the less fortunate. We have been blessed with overabundance in this land, and we are a very generous people.



But over the last four decades, our government has quietly done away with almost all of the restrictions once placed on food assistance. SNAP cards (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) can be used to purchase practically anything with the exception of liquor and cigarettes. These cards are also openly and illegally sold for cash, which allows the recipient to buy anything they want, including cigarettes and liquor.



Food assistance is helping many families keep their heads above water when they would otherwise not get by, and many of these families watch every dime. But the system also allows people to flagrantly disregard the program's original purpose.



Of course there are instances of fraud in every corner of the government, from Congress to defense spending. Why single out food stamps? Because, with over 48 million Americans now using some form of food assistance and few restrictions, the possibilities of waste are unlimited.

...

When we wonder how this great nation traveled from our grandparents' common sense to where we are today, it might be easier to understand with this question: How did the country that created the strongest middle class in history, the country that offered everyone the chance to succeed, the country that built and paid for the transcontinental railroad and the Hoover Dam, won World War II and put Neil Armstrong on the moon—how did that country rack up trillions in debt?

One $41 cake at a time.