According to a recent Fox News poll, 73 percent of Americans are
dissatisfied with the direction of the country, up 20 points from 2012.
Americans sense that there's a lot going wrong in our nation, but most
don't have a clue about the true nature of our problem. If they had a
clue, most would have little stomach for what would be necessary to
arrest our national decline. Let's look at it.
Between two-thirds and three-quarters of federal spending, in contravention of the U.S. Constitution, can be described as Congress taking the earnings or property of one American to give to another, to whom it does not belong. You say, "Williams, what do you mean?" Congress has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there's no Santa Claus or tooth fairy who gives it resources. The fact that Congress has no resources of its very own forces us to recognize that the only way Congress can give one American one dollar is to first -- through intimidation, threats and coercion -- confiscate that dollar from some other American through the tax code.
If any American did privately what Congress does publicly, he'd be condemned as an ordinary thief. Taking what belongs to one American to give to another is theft, and the receiver is a recipient of stolen property. Most Americans would suffer considerable anguish and cognitive dissonance seeing themselves as recipients of stolen property, so congressional theft has to be euphemized and given a respectable name. That respectable name is "entitlement." Merriam-Webster defines entitlement as "the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something." For example, I am entitled to walk into the house that I own. I am entitled to drive the car that I own. The challenging question is whether I am also entitled to what you or some other American owns.
Let's look at a few of these entitlements. More than 40 percent of federal spending is for entitlements for the elderly in the forms of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing and other assistance programs. The Office of Management and Budget calculates that total entitlement spending comes to about 62 percent of federal spending. Military spending totals 19 percent of federal spending. By the way, putting those two
