Sen. Rick Scott is now trying to amend his idea of sunsetting federal programs every 5 years saying he never met it to apply to Social Security, Medicare, the Military, the veterans and so forth. Just sunset the rest of government, I guess; like maybe the border patrol? Republicans think that's important also.
We've kind of got a sunset mechanism already. It's the debt ceiling. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, much of government spending sunsets. It's turned out to have created it's own set of problems; an artificial financial crisis, if the debt ceiling shuts things down.
Rather than adding more sunsets, we should eliminate the debt ceiling sunset, which we don't adhere to anyway. We always do lift the debt ceiling, but we just create an artificial crisis over it, each time, as a ritual of shaming ourselves.
Large deficits seems to be an inevitable part of the equation for propping up the American way of life, but we seem to have survived this far beyond so many predictions of catastrophe.
Yes, I do think we need changes. Simpler lifestyles and less consumption would help. This could start with higher taxes on personal spending for things like luxury homes. Folks may disagree with me, but I think the American people spend too much money on sports; for instance.
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