Spending Cuts: A Perpetually Receding Mirage

Progressives (nee liberals) are wont to remind their conservative opponents that Ronald Reagan signed tax increase legislation into law, but they neglect to mention a related fact necessary to make their statement a completely accurate one.

Reagan was snookered by a Demorat promise to cut spending by multiple dollars more than those to be raised through the enacted tax increases . . . and of course that promise was ephemeral. It was never kept and spending never was cut.

That always is, and must be the case.  That's the way things work in Washington even without taking into account the peculiar language used inside the beltway where a "spending cut" means a reduction in the rate at which spending increases and not actually a reduction in spending.

Ignoring that newspeak phenomenon, however, spending cuts always are ephemeral. They are mirages that constantly recede until they eventually evaporate.

This is so because they come into existence in exchange and as quid pro quo for the enactment of tax increases.  The tax increases become effective immediately if not -- through a Demorat innovation -- retroactively while the spending cuts are promised to be made in the future -- at some indefinite manana.

However, there is no way to bind future congresses, which are free to, and invariably do ignore even well intentioned promises of their predecessors. Because a majority of every Congress is made up of individuals elected, and looking to be reelected, by promising to distribute goodies and ever more goodies to groups of constituents at the expense of the public treasury, the result is foreordained and inevitable.

Our government officials for some unfathomable reason cannot bring themselves to just cut spending right now. If it's been appropriated and is in the pipeline, it's sacrosanct and cannot be stopped. That the treasury's coffers are empty means nothing to the most selfish generation in the nation's history. That is the current generation, the one willing to borrow ever more and pass the resulting obligations on as burdens to its children, grandchildren, great grandchildren . . . ad infinitum. At some point, and probably sooner than later, our progeny will rightfully curse us.