How long will we continue to enable an irresponsible, corrupt government?

FTA
Let's get real. Federal revenue this year will be approximately $2.5 trillion.

That's $2,500,000,000,000.

How much, again? Well, updating some examples Rob Bluey provided at The Foundry lends the following perspective:

It is 2,500 billion.
At $45.8 million per year, LeBron James would need to work 54,607.5 years to earn it.
Average life in the U.S. lasts 2.4 billion seconds.
2.5 billion seconds ago = 1933.
2.5 trillion seconds ago = 74,250 BC.

Furthermore, a stack of 2.5 trillion dollar bills would reach a height of 169,665 miles -- more than two thirds the way to the moon. This brings us to the second part of the problem.

We're set to spend this year $3,500,000,000,000.

Stacked up, that many bills reach to the moon. And that's where we're headed fiscally.

To the moon, Alice.

Now, let's get back to calls for more revenue. Imagine you had a teenager to whom you gave $1,000 a month, and he not only squandered it every time, but also continually maxed out his credit cards. Would your solution be to give him even more money and/or secure him a credit-line increase? Or might you, outraged, cut up the credit cards and tell him he must live within his means? (In reality, you should cut him off completely.)

This may seem a ridiculous example, giving a teenager one grand a month. But is it any more ridiculous than giving the feds $208,000,000,000 a month and then entertaining the notion that they should perhaps get even more? Bueller? Bueller?

Stein?

Listen, if the government cannot get by on $2.5 trillion a year, guess what!

Pull it up root and branch and start anew.

Root and branch.

Also note that the government did get by on $2.5 trillion as recently as 2005; thus, a balanced budget could be achieved simply by resurrecting the spending levels of seven years ago. And if we returned to the 2004 budget, we'd run a surplus exceeding $200 billion with current revenue.

Part of the reason why brings us back to Stein's belief that we can't cut our way to a balanced budget. He's actually correct -- given the feds' definition of a "cut." I'm referring to Washington's accounting trick known as "baseline budgeting," a process by which the government labels any proposal to reduce the rate of spending growth of an already inflated budget projection a cut. Citizens Against Government Waste explains the warped thinking:

[I]f an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut. That is analogous to a person who expects to gain 100 pounds only gaining 75 pounds, and taking credit for losing 25 pounds.

If liberal politicians were truly serious about fiscal restraint, they'd eliminate this sleight-of-hand. But they won't, because they're not. Ronald Reagan learned this the hard way in the 1980s when he agreed to a budget deal that included three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases. The taxes came first.

The cuts never came at all.

As Reagan later wrote, "[t]he Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts."

This is one reason I'm adamantly opposed to tax increases. Like the reckless teenager or Sal, the federal beast will simply consume whatever ventures near its insatiable maw and then some. So my message would be: get by on what you have -- or to Hades with you. Go over that cliff. Because like any addict, you can't help yourself. And better it happens sooner, while Americans still have a bit more change in their pockets (for whatever it's worth), than after they're further impoverished in the name of balancing the budget.

So what's the endgame? First, our more than $16 trillion national debt increases by an average of $3.87 billion per day and amounts to $52,000 for every man, woman, and child. This will never be paid off.

Never.