Entitlements In Stone

Politics is usually about give and take; when your guy is in, you get stuff you like; when your guy is out, the other side gets what they like. Wait long enough and it all comes around again.

I was musing on the size, speed, and sheer number of new Government run programs being foisted on the American people with our own money. My thoughts were kind of hazy, half-formed. Why do these changes need to be so fast? In order to do what you can before mid-term elections can change the balance? Why does the amount of money need to be so large? Because of the economic crisis? No, that's the pretext; these things were going to be pursued anyway.

Then I read this quote from Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute's Center for Economic Studies which crystalized what bugs me so much about it.

But Obama is intent on a policy of no return. His successor will be swimming in so much red ink that he will have no choice but to raise taxes, especially since new entitlements will be set in stone.

There's the rub; it is just possible that the massive salvo of social engineering is designed to be irreversible. I know that sounds alarmist, but have you tried to tinker with an Entitlement program lately? It's political suicide. They take on a life of their own even as they never quite solve the problem they set out to do.

They become commandments of the political order, written in stone: Thou shalt pay thy Entitlements.