RIGHT OF CENTER: GOVERNMENT IN NEED OF BOLD IDEAS

As politicians debate the merits of competing plans that would balance the federal budget in seven or 10 years, and whether to trim the growth of funding for some domestic programs while eliminating others, most lawmakers seem unwilling to renounce the notions that got us into this mess in the first place.

In a recent column, I quoted some of the Founding Fathers and early lawmakers as they struggled with the constitutionality of public aid programs. By trying to mandate compassion through coercion, the federal government has turned the virtue of private philanthropy into the bane of public misanthropy. Along the way, we've managed to provoke class envy, punish achievement and encourage slothfulness while accumulating nearly $5 trillion of debt.

It isn't enough to balance the budget when that budget uses taxpayers' money to finance unconstitutional and immoral government largess. It isn't enough to better manage our nation's resources or somehow bring under control the explosive growth of spending for such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. It isn't enough to provide meager tax breaks.

What's needed are bold new ideas that radically alter -- and reduce -- the federal government's role in Americans' lives. This should be a bipartisan realization. Whether you favor government social programs or not, we no longer can afford them -- if indeed we ever could. Aside from the cursed economics of big government, there is a social cost to the dependency and unaccountability it breeds.

That such ideas -- adoption of a flat income tax or elimination of the income tax and IRS altogether, implementation of medical savings accounts in lieu of inefficient, third-party payer insurance plans and the elimination of whole government departments and their supporting bureaucracy -- are being discussed is promising. That they are met with vilification by the Beltway elites (influenced by hired-gun lobbyists protecting their turf), the status quo national media and a growing class of professional victims is distressing.

To quote the popular "Eagles" song, it's time to "get over it." We need to stop relying on government for our security. The cost is excessive, and the government spends no money on your security without first taking it from someone else. Heavy government expenditures and liberty are incompatible.

Do we value liberty anymore? Ours was intended to be a government "of the people" and "for the people." Are we the people willing to relinquish our claims to government handouts, whether it's Social Security and Medicare or food stamps and corporate subsidies?

Balancing the budget is only a start. After all, to pay off our nation's debt, we'll need annual budget surpluses comparable to the budget deficits we've sustained since 1969. Those surpluses won't come about through tinkering with existing wasteful and burgeoning programs. Moreover, we must move beyond the economics of taxing and spending and address the philosophical issues of what form our government is to take in the next millennium.

There is too much at stake -- our future as the freest and most prosperous nation in the world -- for us to perpetuate policies that are proven failures.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.