Quote from TGregg:
Greenspan has neither the power to raise taxes, nor the power to cut spending, and has called for fiscal restraint more often than ETers have posted about the coming market crash. How is the debt his fault?
I suppose some blame could be placed on all of the presidents from way back when for not leading us to financial balance, and more could be blamed on congressmen with their insatiable desire for pork BBQ. However, the vast majority of the blame belongs with the voters who vote in career politicians who make drunken sailors look like the tight-fisted Jewish stereotype.
I'm not going to dig up the numbers or the source, but if you take the total government budget divided by the number of US citizens, and subtract how much they pay to the government, you find that something like 80% (plus or minus 10%) of Americans are "getting more" than they pay for. With a handout rate like that, there's no way to change without a whole lot of pain. And today's voter can't even handle the "pain" of diet and exercise, when he knows for a fact that it's good for him. Guess we get to wait until we have a fiscal stroke before we wake up.