Michael A. Walsh puts the real issue into focus:
Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington — the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline.
Forget the political jockeying for position between a president desperately seeking re-election in 16 months and a Congress equally desperately seeking not to be blamed for spending even more money that we don’t have.
Forget the fact that such “entitlements” as Social Security and Medicare — social-insurance programs that the public long thought to be actuarially sound — have been exposed as little more than legal Ponzi schemes, paying today’s benefits out of tomorrow’s borrowed receipts.
Instead, just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks?
For this, in essence, is what the debt-ceiling fight is all about — the inexorable and ultimately fatal growth of the welfare state. If you don’t believe it, just look at President Obama’s veiled threat to withhold Grandma’s Social Security benefits if Congress doesn’t let him borrow another $2 trillion or so to get himself safely past the 2012 election.
