Gems like these are why I so enjoy reading James Joyner at Outside the Beltway:
The two parties and their constituent interest groups have done a superb job of poisoning the well. Republicans have virtually ensured that we’ll never have anything short of a massive defense budget and we’ll never have the sort of confiscatory tax brackets for high earners that they have in Europe and we had here as recently as John Kennedy’s administration. And Democrats have made it a virtual certainty that we’ll not only not cut back on the social safety net but that it will incrementally increase and periodically boom. The “compromise” solution is massive deficit spending.
Unsustainable? Obviously — and it’s doubly sad, considering we’ve done this to ourselves.
Short of a massive national sea-change in attitudes and expectations, we’re well on the way to self-destruction…. and as much as I like Joyner’s “poisoned well” analogy, my mind keeps visualizing little hamsters running on a wheel.
I hate being a hamster, but I’m afraid I don’t see a way out at the moment.