Source:Mercatus Center– holding an event on fiscal responsibility in Washington. (Which at the very least is an Oxymoron)

“Thursday October 7th 2011

This event is the third of a four-part series, “How the Debt Committee Can Significantly Improve Our Fiscal Course.” Don’t miss the other three events addressing fundamental tax reform, budget reform, and spending reform.

Many point to the past months’ rancorous debates and subsequent credit downgrade as an indication the federal budget process is “broken.” But if its principle aim is to control spending, has it ever really worked?

This discussion focuses on the following questions:

-What are the key weaknesses of the current federal budget process?

-How and why have most past process reforms failed, and how should new budget rules be designed and enforced to ensure effectiveness?

-What reforms could be immediately enacted to direct real near-term spending reform?

-What is necessary to ensure medium and long-term spending reforms actually materialize?

Help us caption & translate this video!”

From Mercatus Center 

Imagine living in a world where you live on Monopoly money and you own your own personal printer and have your own private banker who just gives you money when you are short: actually, you don’t have to imagine that, because that’s the world that the U.S. Government in Washington not just lives in, but operates and owns.

The U.S. Government (Administration and Congress) doesn’t pay for its operations simply because they don’t believe they have too. They have constituents who want Uncle Sam to this, that, and something else for them, on top of everything that government is already doing for them (or to them) but then also claim about their taxes being too high and would rather drive their sports car off the cliff into a lake than pay higher taxes. And any politician who raises their taxes risks their political careers in doing so.

So what government does instead (only at the Federal level) is say: “We have all of these priorities that we have to do and with the economy being weak and unemployment high, we can’t afford to pay taxes right now. And because of the economy, this not the time to cut real government spending, and with interest rates being low, we’ll just borrow the money.” Or blame the other part for deficit spending and accuse them of being exactly what they are, which is big spenders. Hypocrisy in politics goes together like hot dogs with mustard: it’s a natural combination.

And this is why we have the debt and deficit situation that we have. We have politicians who won’t tell their constituents the truth about government and taxation. We have voters who want government to do a lot for them, but they don’t want to pay for it.