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The complexities of limited government

Here's the thing about limited government: until you explain how you intend to limit government, discussions about doing so are fruitless. It cracks me up when people say they're for balancing the budget and making government smaller and more efficient, like they're the first people to ever think that up.

Tax cuts aren't a unique policy position, and unless you plan on stopping something the government is currently doing, tax cuts only make the problem worse. So what's the answer?

End corn subsidies? Kiss a big chunk of red and purple states goodbye. Cull the FDIC? Oh, that'll be a big hit with anybody with a savings account. Shrink our military budget? What, do you hate the troops now? End foreign aid? AIPAC will want words with you before you can finish the sentence. Abolish the IRS? Great idea, maybe we should just pay cops and firemen directly, and while we're at it why don't we fund our own road construction and deliver our own mail?

Look, nobody likes the big, scary Fed, but we use its services every day. The money you think you own is meaningless without the full faith and credit of you-know-who; and no, it's not God. If anybody wants to cut government down to size, fine, go nuts. But until they specify what they're cutting, this discussion isn't going anywhere. If problems had simple and easy answers, they wouldn't be problems.

Life is complicated like that.

John Boske Jr.

Bartlett

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