Don't Say We Weren't Warned About Government Spending

I hesitate to quote a French scholar, given the low regard we seem to have these days for all things French, but I found his cautionary tale offered as a warning for America, to be quite enlightening. Our friend writes of ancient democracies that failed when government treasuries were exhausted in efforts to “relieve indigent citizens or to supply games and theatrical amusements for the populace,” then goes on to explain how it could happen here in the U.S.

Yes, I know it doesn’t take a lot of explaining. Believing government cash to be free money, we demand that our elected leaders satisfy our every wish. Politicians eager to win our votes are only too willing to oblige. So we get welfare, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, prescription drug coverage, parks, parades, stadiums, arenas, community centers and heaven knows what else, all courtesy of our benevolent public officials. Then, as the government helps the indigent and entertains the rest of us, expenditures grow and grow until they outstrip our willingness – or ability – to pay. Poof. Exhausted treasuries.

Now, in days of old, those ancient democracies would go out and loot a foreign land to replenish their treasuries. But in today’s world of sophisticated finance, there is no need to loot our neighbors. We simply sell them some bonds, load up on debt and loot our children and grandchildren instead. It’s so much cleaner.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be. Our founding fathers thought they had provided a measure of protection against such pandering when they decided upon a representative form of government. Fearing a general vote of the citizens on every spending decision would lead to both chaos and mob rule, they decided to vest those decisions in an elected few. Surely, or so our forefathers thought, those worthy of election to public office would value wisdom over whim, prudence over popularity, restraint over reelection.

But such restraint requires leadership, and leadership in this day and age too often consists of sticking a finger in the air to see which way the winds are blowing. Our esteemed officials then conclude that they are leaders because they respond to those winds of desire. That’s akin to believing that a sailboat leads the wind. They can’t see that leadership lies not in riding the wave of public opinion, but in being the ship that creates the wave.

Which is why we end up with a government that spends more than it takes in. According to our French scholar, we shouldn’t be surprised, for “wherever the poor direct public affairs…it appears certain that, as they profit by the expenditure of the state, they will often augment that expenditure.” In other words, we benefit from government spending, so we’ll elect politicians who promise us more of the same.

Therein lies the answer to a spendthrift government – us. It is often said that we get the government that we deserve. If so, we’ll continue to see overspending until we get beyond our entitlement mentality. But that is easier said than done, for we’ve never been a people inclined to undergo “privation or any inconvenience.”

At least that’s the observation of our French scholar – Alexis de Tocqueville, whose writings I cite are from his 1831 masterpiece, Democracy In America. One-hundred seventy-four years later, his takes are dead on. Perhaps someday, we’ll prove him wrong. We haven’t yet.