Politicians love spending money.  Ronald Reagan's famous quip was that saying government spends like a drunken sailor was an insult to drunken sailors -- at least they are spending their own money, while the government is spending ours.  So while the government is coming up with schemes to fund, they are counting on forcing the taxpayers to foot the bill, regardless of whether or not an expenditure is effective, efficient, or even worthwhile.

Even worse than the idea that politicians take the first fruits of our labors to spend at will and whim is the attitude of many that they are justified in doing so and need not answer to the sources of their funding.  To many, those of us who wish to send less of our money to Washington (or the state capital) and spend more of it on our own families are "greedy"; some even claim that we don't even "deserve" our own paychecks.  We are taxed on our labors, we are taxed on our investments, we are taxed on our savings, we are taxed on our purchases, we are taxed on our profits, and then we are taxed when we die.

All this taxation serves a government that spends our money without regard to success.  As Judge Janice Rogers Brown has noted, "[g]overnment is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase."  Consider that rarely does a government program or tax get cut, much less eliminated, especially if it fails miserably in its stated goal, or if the stated need to be addressed no longer exists.  One such example is the telecommunications tax that was enacted to fund the Spanish American War in 1898; the tax was finally repealed -- over 100 years later.  If a government program doesn't seem to be working, instead of cutting or reforming it, the government typically responds by [i]increasing[/i] funding.  Consider the Rural Utilities Service, started during FDR's New Deal -- do we really still need a government program to ensure that rural areas get electricity(assuming it was ever a good idea)?

According to the conservative Heritage Foundation, the federal budget contains 342 economic development programs, 130 different programs serving at-risk youth, 130 more programs for the disabled, 75 different programs supporting international educational and exchanges, and 72 different clean water programs.  Assuming for a second that each of these is a valid function of the federal government; could perhaps some of these programs be consolidated, cutting staff and bureaucracy?  When was the last time these programs were reviewed for effectiveness?  The Heritage Foundation also details $60 billion in corporate welfare, and up to $30 billion in agriculture subsidies (the majority of which go to large agribusiness firms as well as rich celebrities like Ted Turner and the late disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay).

Even the tax code itself is often used as a government program; specialized, "targeted" tax breaks allow the government to reward activities and behavior it finds good at the expense of others, rather than trying to simply persuade individuals and businesses to act in a certain way and lowering taxes for everyone.  Buying a house might be a good financial decision for many; however, should people who prefer to rent be forced to subsidize the purchase?  State taxes can be written off on the federal income tax return, effectively meaning that people living in states with low tax burdens partially subsidize the tax bills for those residents of high-tax states.  Nearly everyone knows smoking is bad for one's health, but rather than ban tobacco, the government turned it into a cash cow by ramping up cigarette taxes. 

Rather than putting the onus on "greedy" and "undeserving" individuals, the government should be forced to justify every cent confiscated from its citizens.  The first test any government expenditure should be forced to pass is this:  is this program authorized by the Constitution?  If not, it should not be funded by the federal government.  If truly necessary, then the program or function should be delegated to state or local governments; if truly necessary, then a Constitutional amendment can be proposed to add it to the federal government's list of responsibilities.  But if the government is funding an activity or program, they should at least be looking to see if the program duplicates other existing programs, is effective, and is efficient.

When putting together an annual (or monthly, or even weekly) budget, most individuals, families, and businesses perform at least a perfunctory review of expenses and decide whether or not a particular good, service, activity, or employee is still necessary; it isn't automatically added to the list unless it meets certain criteria.  Not so the government:  each item is "baselined" with an automatic increase year-to-year.  Thus, a budget "cut" most often means that a particular program was actually increased, just at a lower rate than had been previously baselined.  Let's say a person eats sushi once a week, but plans to start eating sushi three times a week when he gets his next raise; the raise comes, and he decides instead to increase his visits to the sushi place only to twice a week instead of thrice:  by the government's method of accounting, he has actually cut his sushi intake, in spite of the total consumption increasing by 100%!  This is how politicians can claim to be "fiscally responsible" while government spending keeps increasing at rates faster than inflation.

Instead, the government should start it's budgeting based on a "Zero Option":  each cabinet agency should have to build its budget from scratch -- from zero.  Every program should be forced to put together a budget that justifies every expense requested, based on the stated goals of the program and the estimated needs and independent of previous years' expenditures.  Each cabinet secretary should be tasked with ensuring that every program for which tax money is requested is not duplicated.  Instead of the "default" setting for government spending being an increase over the previous year's spending, the "default" is nothing at all.

The government creates no value itself:  it has to rely on money collected from individuals, families, and businesses to fund its service offerings.  Those entities have no choice in whether or not they can comply; the government has the power of force, the power of a gun, to compel compliance.  With that power should come the responsibility to justify every confiscation, to prove that the government "needs" and "deserves" the money taken.  It's OUR money, not the government's.  Implementing the Zero Option would emphasize that fact and help the politicians remember that crucial point.