Going to the well once too often

… Or the law of diminishing returns never goes away.

Many tried and true political methods of the past to fund benefits that got people elected or hired, or got agendas promoted, are inherently coming to an end. Here are obvious examples:

The tobacco industry agreement provided very large de facto windfall taxes that are already spent.
Cigarette taxes are raised to where the resulting tax income is at its limit.
Government slashes in Medicare and Medicaid are forcing doctors and others in the industry to leave this part of the business. Present beneficiaries are going back on their own.
Pay as you go for social security has been a successful ruse, but coming to an end as the baby boomers arrive in the queue and the ratio of workers to beneficiaries becomes much smaller.
Borrowing money to pay federal bills vice raising taxes to pay the same bills is ever more a political hot potato. It is today’s version of taxation without representation as we pass the principal and interest on to future generations who cannot vote today. Economic arguments about the affordability ignore the political fairness problem which grows more and more.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a dicey political problem when used to fund new benefits. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is to be avoided. Even when the Peace Dividend appeared as a windfall de facto tax income in the early 1990’s, it disappeared quickly as a funding source. In the rural part of Tennessee where I now live, the apparent shifting of benefits from long time tax payers and voters to the poor and illegal immigrants is a very volatile voting issue to those on the losing end. The incremental health care discussion is especially volatile.
The general public is becoming much more aware of the costs of environmentalism as these costs begin hitting them in the pocket book, and lifestyles. The general public can understand the idea of 10% of the biofuel for airline travel taking a field the size of Florida to grow, all the while their cost of food also goes up.
Alternate sources of income, such as paying to use public parks, or paying more to watch our beloved TV’s (you will be learning more about Cable Cards soon), will also reach a point of diminishing returns.

There are some obvious consequences:
Every dollar we borrow from a foreign source to pay today’s federal bills threatens our future National Sovereignty and National Interests.
Using smoke and mirrors to try obfuscate robbing Peter to pay Paul will have terrible political consequences when exposed to the light of day.
Uncontrolled spending vis-à-vis earmarks will come to a real end, not a smoke and mirrors end.
A National energy policy will include all elements, to include future domestic drilling for oil (with time limits).
Generational political conflicts over benefits and funding of these benefits will become political reality. Likely, birth rates will go up, as the old form of Social Security called large families comes back.
A Congressional Term Limits Amendment will be become the law of the land. We already have a Presidential Term Limits Amendment.