Government promises?

In the coming debate regarding major reductions in federal spending certain politicos will frame “spending” as “government promises”. That a reduction in spending is somehow a reduction in a promise.



There were never any “government promises“. You see, governments don’t think nor make decisions. Any promises were exactly made by politicos, with other peoples’ money, through the mechanism of government.



The reduction in spending, meaning a reduction in politico promises, creates a basic problem for politicos: they have spent the better part of eight decades spending other peoples' money to build dependent political constituency. They have constructed, maintained, and perpetuated spending as a political constituency building exercise and could care less about the actual outcome of the particular spending. Spending focus by politicos is primarily on the dependency factor to built and maintain constituency. They also grant rent seekers (special interests) benefits (taxpayer money) as a further extension of political constituency building.


The result is: reducing/eliminating other people (politicos) ability to spend other peoples' money (taxpayer) on other people (recipient class) is in fact a threat to politicos’ constructed, maintained, and perpetual political constituency building exercise. Hence reducing spending is a threat to their supporting political constituency (votes, political donations, campaign volunteers, etc.).


Therefore, perpetuating spending is paramount to the politico. Framing the argument that spending equals government promises is an attempt to portray reduced spending as broken promises. The Orwellian phrase “government promises” is merely new speak for “politico promises” as governments don’t think or decide, only politicos think and decide.