Okay. Now I have to call you out as maliciously ignorant (unless you are actually a rat troll).
It sounds as if you may have fallen for the false dichotomy propagated by the Democrat "mainstream" newsrooms and their pundits who would have you believe that Americans are confused schizophrenics who want all kinds of government "services" but "don't want to pay for them". It's a con job. A scam. A lie.
The people who constantly demand more "services" and "free stuff" from government are not the hard-working, traditional American families who pay the taxes, and the hard-working, traditional American families who pay the taxes are not the same people who always have their grubby paws out looking for "free stuff". We are talking about two separate and distinct groups of people right there.
One group is the Republican party "base" and the other is the Democrat party "base".
Poll after poll show that Americans don't want their Medicare and SS benefits cut and they don't want to pay more in taxes to support these programs. Look at the reaction to the end of SS 2% payroll tax holiday.
POLL: Clear Majority Want No Medicare, Social Security Or Education Cuts
The people who constantly demand more "services" and "free stuff" from government are not the hard-working, traditional American families who pay the taxes, and the hard-working, traditional American families who pay the taxes are not the same people who always have their grubby paws out looking for "free stuff". We are talking about two separate and distinct groups of people right there.
We have 57 million on SS, 47 million on Medicare, 70 million on Medicaid (includes CHIPS but not the 18 million more that will be added thru Obamacare), 48 million on food stamps, etc. Almost one out of every two Americans receives some sort of government check.
Mark Steyn did a brilliant column on all of this, America not paying its fair share--You cannot simultaneously enjoy American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has got to go
"My Gallic charmer is on to something. According to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics: Government expenditures per person in France, $18,866.00; in the United States, $19,266.00. That's adjusted for purchasing-power parity, and, yes, no comparison is perfect, but did you ever think the difference between America and the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would come down to quibbling over the fine print? In that sense, the federal debt might be better understood as an American Self-Delusion Index, measuring the ever-widening gap between the national mythology (a republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens) and the reality (a 21st century cradle-to-grave nanny state in which, as the Democrats' Convention boasted, "government is the only thing we do together.")
"Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune: Government spending in Australia is 33.1 percent of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1 percent. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4 percent, and revenues are 41 percent – a shortfall but in the ballpark. Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but revenues are 24 percent – the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major economy."
"So all the agonizing over our annual trillion-plus deficits overlooks the obvious solution: Given that we're spending like Norwegians, why don't we just pay Norwegian tax rates?"