Hopeful or Hopeless?

It's tempting, after seeing Tea Party tax day events drawing thousands in cities around the country, to be hopeful that there's a chance the citizens will elect representatives this Fall who will turn back the clock on the alarming rush to the top-down socialism so favored by those now in power.

But simply electing enough conservative representatives, while still far from a certainty, is also not necessarily a guarantee that they'll do the right thing. Because the right thing is going to be very hard, and will probably turn many of the same people against their chosen representatives.

A troubling valid criticism of the Left against the Tea Party movement isn't the ridiculous and insulting charges of racism and redneck ignorance. Rather, it's the charge that many Tea Party protesters will turn their signs around and protest the opposite point of view if they actually get people in office who enact their wishes.

Because it is certain that for the government to balance their budget, they're going to have to reduce or eliminate a substantial portion of government discretionary spending. It won't take long before the folks find out this includes some of their own government benefits.

The unpopular and certainly corrupt spending that so exercises the Tea Party from TARP and the Auto Company bailouts can be cancelled and the money pulled back, and most will cheer. Except perhaps for the Auto Workers who lose their jobs when General Motors falls apart without continued cash from Uncle Sugar.

Big news this tax day is the fact that nearly half of Americans didn't pay any income tax. Most of those folks not only paid no tax; they actually received cash from the government. Euphemistically called 'Tax Credits', in reality they're cash kickbacks from a President and Congress that hope to buy those votes from the grateful recipients.

Hopefully Tea Party folks realize that the first government goodies to get cut have to be these handouts. No more homebuyer credits, 'cash for clunkers', earned income credits for the middle class, or all of the other varied programs designed to pay off people demographically most likely to vote for Democrats.

Much more will have to be cut for any chance to return the federal government to solvency. That means no more massive handouts to states to keep schools open. It means possible adjustments to the Unemployment benefits that keep getting extended indefinitely. It means cutting the featherbedding in government agencies across the spectrum.

But even those won't be enough. To really get spending under control, serious work has to be done with the biggest monsters of the federal budget. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt, and that problem won't be solved by wishing.

The longstanding practice of raiding the Social Security surplus to fund every whim of congress has finally turned the program upside down. It's time for the government to tell the truth about Social Security; it is not a retirement savings and insurance plan, but an income transfer between workers and retirees.

The government told the mother of all lies when they sold our great-grandparents on Social Security. See, if every dollar of the 15 percent of our earnings actually went into some sort of interest-bearing account that paid off when we retired, we could all retire pretty comfortably (at least those of us who work). But that's not how the program ever was intended to work, because if it actually worked that way, then it would serve no benefit to the political class.

Now the baby boomers are retiring. And the numbers just don't work. The tipping point is here. The ratio of payers to payees is too low, unless we decide to take 40 percent from all the payers.

Something has to give. And there aren't any painless options.

I just hope everybody in the Tea Party understands the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for ..."