The Taxpayer’s Prayer

America has produced the finest political thinkers in the history of the world, but a free-spending Congress pays little attention to that wisdom.

Consider the words of Thomas Jefferson on deficit spending: “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

That sounds like today’s Congress, which has piled up a deficit in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

It was President Ronald Reagan’s goal to reverse that trend by cutting the size of government. “We must never again abuse the trust of working men and women, by sending their earnings on a futile chase after the spiraling demands of a bloated Federal Establishment,” Reagan said in his second inaugural address.

But rather than following the wisdom of Jefferson or Reagan, today’s elected officials prefer Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of commerce Harry Hopkins, who proclaimed. “We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

Sound like anyone in office you know?

It’s not just politicians, though, who push for more government handouts. So observed playwright George Bernard Shaw: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”

Paul today can be found in the ranks of the recipients of subsidy programs for everything from agriculture to welfare, road building to education.

But there are costs. Another president of the 20th century knew it. “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have,” said Gerald Ford.

Even humorist P.J. O’Rourke had the sense of it. “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

We’d all do well, then, to heed the words of President Andrew Jackson on government: “Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves.”

May our politicians learn from the past, so they may guide us to a free and prosperous future.