Even Half a Percent Is Too Much

Remember the pride taken by Team Obama when the $17 billion in savings was announced last month? Believe it or not, Congressional Dems think that's roughly $17 billion too much.

Actually, that's a misstatement. Congressional Dems aren't opposed to cutting $17 billion, just the $17 billion Obama proposed. They're all in favor of cutting elsewhere, which is code for cutting nowhere. I'm no deficit scold, having thought it should have been bigger in 2001 and unopposed to the government levering up in a downturn. I am, however, opposed to using such a levering moment to expand entitlements that will never be withdrawn.

Have 535 winners of rigged popularity contests, through the use of countless tax deductions, exclusions, credits, subsidies and exemptions, organized the other 300 million into so well calibrated a social order that rolling back a sliver of the special interest monstrosity we call the Federal Budget bring chaos, anarchy and ruin? Will the Republic fall if the purchasers of imported drywall aren't reimbursed by the rest of us if it fails?

To twist Churchill, never before in human history have so few been given so much by so many.