Chief’s Reply:
I reject the initial premise that most of the stuff that has been ladled into the governmental mix is properly constitutional. I know this idea is NOT very widely held these days, but I persist with a habit of reading words for meaning, not for wanna-be inferences.

Your observation “The idea that government doesn’t work, so we shouldn’t even try is, in my opinion, suicidal.” comes very close to “Politician’s Logic: We MUST do something! This is SOMETHING, therefore we MUST do it!” I reject such reasoning.

In the case of the specific issue at hand, there have already been a series of regulations and laws clarifying the terms of obtaining and using credit, along with requirements for disclosure statements, etc. At some point IMHO there is such a thing as being personally responsible and accountable for one’s freely accepted obligations, financial or otherwise. I have NEVER been dragged into a bank at gunpoint and forced to sign loan papers or take out a credit card account. Admittedly I have received muliple OFFERS for such things…but hey, I just say NO! No big deal!

Efficient government…having worked in the Federal government for a number of years…that seems highly oxymoronic to me. Many internal regulations FORCE inefficiency!

The phrase about “unfunded tax cuts” is curious also. Implicit in this is the attitude that the tax reciepts are property of the government, and that they have the first claim on the money that we earn, so if the gov’t income is reduced, then they automatically have the full expectation of it being made good from US in some other way! IT’s OUR MONEY THAT WE ALLOW THE GOV’T TO HAVE…if we don’t like what they are doing with it, IT”S OUR SAY SO to cut ’em off as WE feel necessary, not their RIGHT to demand more from us. Otherwise, it ends up with the situation of :”bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy” which is far too close to reality to be humorous.