Toxic Entitlements: A Cultural-political Malignancy

By Patrick Hall

There is a scene from the classic comedy film Animal House that serves as a cautionary tale for all Americans who place too much faith and money in the trustworthiness of the United States government, often referred to as Washington, D.C., and the political class. This is particularly true concerning the management of so-called entitlements like the Social Security Trust Fund, Medicare, Medicaid, and a plethora of federal departments and programs. The political class has, for all intents and purposes, bankrupted these arrangements.  What the current Trump administration has revealed through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is that politicians- both Democrats and Republicans- along with the fourth branch of government, the “Administrative State," have left the country and its citizens with a big question mark: Where do we go from here? DOGE's monumental task is to review a combination of asset sales, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment eliminations, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions. Regarding the last point, Steve Forbes, a businessman and investment entrepreneur, once quipped that for every 10 federal, state, and local government employees, you probably only need four. Government institutions often function as “make-work programs,” and their efficiency and purpose are usually debatable.

But returning to the Animal House metaphor, it illustrates some fraternity brothers borrowing the car of a newly sworn-in freshman frat brother. During the evening and well into the next day, a trio of fraternity members returns the vehicle completely trashed to the distraught freshman brother.  

The freshman, now viewing his wrecked vehicle, was upset to the point of tears. He then exclaimed to his fellow Fraties, " How could you let this happen to my car? “In response, one of the fraternity members, played by actor Tim Matheson, calmly explained to the freshman that he had really messed up. “You trusted us!”

Hopefully, and I truly mean “hopefully,” the Trump administration, through DOGE, can begin to repair the damage and the complete mismanagement of the entitlement programs. However, with the ongoing federal deficit running into the trillions, it’s going to take a miracle, if not a new way of thinking about anything for which the political class is responsible. Remember, these are the same individuals who, in the 1980s and beyond, referred to social security and other entitlement funds as a “Locked Box.” Meanwhile, billions, if not trillions, of dollars confiscated from all tax-paying Americans have simply gone into general operating costs or funding whatever the political class in Washington, DC, considered necessary.

 Once again, referencing the scene in Animal House, the political class is now telling all Americans: Sorry about the trillions of dollars we have spent that have placed the nation in debt. But it is your fault.  You trusted us!

But there is a hard truth to face for Americans who placed their confidence and money in the hands of an all-powerful, albeit unaccountable, governing class.  It was the harsh lesson that historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin, as well as economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, warn us about.  Sadly, few of us, particularly in the political class, ever listened.  

The primary purpose of the Constitution of the United States was to protect citizens from an all-powerful and overreaching government. The Founding Fathers had experienced tyranny and oppression under their European despots and overlords. To paraphrase, Thomas Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence sought freedom and the opportunity to carve their own paths, using their hard-earned resources to address “their problems.”

Nowhere in our Constitution are citizens granted the right to healthcare, housing, food, a "living" wage, or even a minimum wage. These rights have been fabricated, and politicians have pledged support to special interest groups to garner votes. After years of government waste and outright theft, far too many Americans feel entitled to assistance, rent control, housing, and a decent living whether they have earned it or not. In his classic work, Visions of the Anointed, economist Thomas Sowell pointed out that far too many Americans are “benefit rich and accountability poor.”

Self-reliance seems to be an outdated value for those caught in a victim mentality and government dependency. Furthermore, many Black Americans and their elected representatives, including the Congressional Black Caucus, remain entrenched in this mindset. It is a questionable, if not dangerous, cultural-political issue that Americans have gradually been led (or indoctrinated) to accept this overreach by the political class.  It is not beneficial!

The solution has been staring us in the face for decades, and the cost-cutting efforts proposed by DOGE are just a small start.  All government departments and services (including our sacred and unconstitutional entitlement programs) must be reduced. Means-testing, along with the outright reduction of many federal government departments and programs, is essential if we are to avoid the cultural-economic death star represented by the growing $36 trillion debt. Concerning the so-called cuts in entitlement programs that Democrats criticize, they reflect the usual Democrat distortion. Reducing proposed increases in federal spending is not the same as cuts. When DOGE and the Republican political class propose “increases” in spending for Medicaid, among others, over the next decade to $1.5 trillion rather than the planned $2.4 trillion, it's crucial to reiterate: a reduction in an increase in spending is not a cut!

To paraphrase the late Peter G. Peterson and his fiscally conservative Foundation, which maintains a running clock of the national debt, a brief review of news about the national debt is often dominated by various self-interest groups and political partisans.  This political triad of politics, money, and power will not disappear. However, it is excessively disproportionate, if not harmful, to how we should allocate our national resources and funds for the benefit of current and future generations of Americans. Will we take this action to save our Republic? Only God knows.¹
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1. To cite a chief economist in the Trump/DOGE administration—"Government funding is not efficient. Money is lost in the bureaucracy built around failing agencies. When you elect politicians promising to support such agencies, you are essentially electing people who will use other people's money to do your charity. That's right. The bottom 50% of Americans get to vote, but they pay less than 3% of the federal income tax revenue. The top 10% of wage earners - everyone who made at least $169,800 - pay $1.7 trillion or 76% of the total income taxes.
In addition, to say that the rich don't pay their fair share is absurd. It would be more accurate to say that half of American voters pay nearly none of the income taxes that support the entitlements they expect to receive. If there was a flat income tax in America, the clamor for more entitlements would likely end.” And even that’s a big maybe.