I'll try not to do this often, finding just one story and running with it, and I'm sure if I perused additional papers I could find a few articles to throw in the heap. But reading my Sunday Baltimore Sun, I came across a wire service article from Tribune that originally ran in the LA Times, and it made me bristle.
Alana Semuels did a great job painting the scene of a Rick Santorum rally in South Carolina, but I have to hope she was nearly choking on the undertones of hypocrisy in the room.
Routinely through the stump speech, Santorum lobs vague charges against Obama and the government about its lack of fiscal discipline, all to great cheers from his supporters.
But when you start to read more about these supporters, there seems an incongruency to what they say they want in a candidate and a government, and how they live and would like to keep living.
Semuels spoke to 54-year-old Nancy Garvin, who likes Santorum's small government message since she “wants to see expenditures cut 'in half.'”
“But Garvin, whose husband, a carpenter, has been out of work for four years, depends on the very government she wants to see cut back. She collects disability insurance — it is what she and her husband have survived on as he's looked for work. Her mother is on Social Security. Garvin herself used to work as a nurse at a hospital where many patients paid for services through Medicaid, another program using federal money.” (Semuels)
In fact, this may be an epidemic across the state. The Federal government took in roughly $17.4 billion in tax revenue from the Palmetto State in 2010.
That's a lot of money to line big governments pockets. But when South Carolinians get their federal appropriations back, their hands dove a little deeper into those pockets. For every dollar paid in, the state gets about $1.35 back. There aren't many investments that pay out that well that consistently.
Even if we assume those figures are a little muddier than they seem, it still paints a picture of a state that gets back more than it puts in – a state that is doing pretty damn well in this whole big government, federalist racket.
Now obviously there are a lot of ways to spend federal dollars, and the methods that seem to draw the greatest ire are entitlement programs. Of course, what is entitlement, and what is a vital government service seems to depend on who's getting the money – me or them.
As Semuels points out “much of the money spent in South Carolina goes to the programs that make up a big chunk of the federal budget – defense, Social Security and Medicaid.”
This seems to fly right in the face of the convictions of many of these Santorum supporters, and generally most GOP enthusiasts since the Republican field is all trumpeting the curbing or outright killing of “entitlemen programs.”
But Social Security, Medicaid, and defense are three huge pillars of a “big government.”
What screams big, centralized, powerful government more than a robust defense budget? If you want to look at openly wasteful spending, pork projects, and government overreach, a serious examination of the entire defense budget would probably make any small government conservative cry. But it's a lot easier to protect the money that flows to your state and shout out "national security" than make the hard choices.
Is there a more obvious, grander “entitlement program” than Social Security? Remember, this isn't just for those of a certain age; it also supports or supplements federal disability and other programs. The Social Security Trust Fund, once controlled by a dedicated tax revenue, has been used as more of a flex-account for more than 20 years. But try to curb that program and you'll jump to the top of AARP's hit list.
And if you really hate government spending, the voters of South Carolina, or voters of any state for that matter, can rise up against it, at least in terms of Medicaid. Participating in that program is voluntary. If you really wanted to send a message about your distaste for government spending and entitlement, tell your state to stop paying in, and tell the federal government, “thanks, but no thanks.” Of course, you better have a good back up plan for health care assistance, unless you want to tell a certain portion of your populace, “sorry, but them's the breaks, good luck.” It may be surprising how many voters quickly realize they could use a little help.
I'm not trying to pick on South Carolina specifically, because I am sure this kind of disconnect exists in a lot of states, in nearly every block of voters of all political inclinations. But the primary circuit has put a bulls eye on the Eighth State, and so it draws the focus on the American body politic.
Unfortunately, it seems said body is that of a child at times. When we start to proclaim what we want in our government or candidates, we want it all, regardless of the conflicts within those yearnings.
We want to go to the candy store and the toy store even though there's only time for one before soccer practice. And we are willing to believe any driver who says they can get us to both, even if they haven't uttered an inkling how.
It is only children who occasionally get everything they want, and it should be only children who bitch about it this much when they don't.
Hopefully we can all realize we are the ones who get to drive this car after all. That means some really tough choices need to be made about where we want to go and how we want to get there, because there is only so much gas and so much time before everyone is screaming so loud it causes an accident.
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