Why do politicians have such a hard time with the concept of "living within your means"?

Democrats want a welfare state. The Republicans want a warfare state. Democrats don't want to cut domestic spending. Republicans don't want to cut foreign spending. There is no party that supports spending less on both. And Republicans and Democrats will sabotage the other parties efforts to cut the spending that they like.

And the voters have come to expect that the role of government is to either police the world or take care of us from cradle to grave.

We've got to change our view on the role of government in foreign and domestic affairs both. And that doesn't seem to be politically acceptable at the moment.

Because it is YOUR and anybodies tax dollar. They learned the wrong math. For me 3-5=0 - and not a -2. In the REAL world you can't take 5 apples away from 3.... if there are only three available.

I never had any credit or CCs in my life. I can't even get any credit (which I don't want anyway). I buy only what I can pay for in cash. Having absolutely no debts, I can do one thing most others can't - I can sleep very well without any fears!

The US of A is on the way out fiscally and economically. The US having 4% of the total world population is spending more on warfare and arms than the rest of the world combined..... go figure! What a perverted situation. It serves the US well to go down the toilet with all these idiotic policies.

Ah, but here's the rub:

They do not bring in 1 trillion, because of direct cuts to that revenue in the form of tax cuts (projected revenues that will never be collected). Instead, they only bring in 700 billion, to fund a budget that was based upon 1 trillion in projected revenue. No spending cuts were made to make the budget match the decrease in projected revenues (the GOP, inexplicably, insists that revenue cuts do not have to be accounted for in the budget).

This has very little to do with new spending: this is, however, directly related to the immediate spending deficit that occurs when we need to borrow 300 billion to fund the budget that was based upon 1 trillion on projected revenues.

The "fiscal irresponsibility" occurred when the GOP forced cuts to projected revenues, without accounting for the budget shortfall that occurs when trying to maintain a 1 trillion dollar budget on sharply decreased revenues.

This isn't radical.

Let me know when you find the real answer.

Politicians are just people. If you look at the ignorant masses in this country you find a large number who are in debt up to their eye balls. Maxed out on their credit cards, and on the verge of losing their home to foreclosure.

The more fiscally astute are too busy running their business figuring ways around all of the roadblocks thrown in front of them by government to get involved.

For the same reason that the voters do.

Our politicians DO represent us, giving us approximately (not always exactly) what we want. We *want* more government services than we're willing to pay for. We want to blame that spending that the *other* politicians are doing rather than the spending that our own politicians (representing our state) are doing.

Uh almost no one voluntarily avoids using credit, even those who pay off their balance every billing cycle. those of us who bought houses and ever had a mortgage are/were living beyond our means.

Do you really want riots in the streets? because that is a politician's worst nightmare.

In 2001, Conservatives were warning America that paying off the National Debt too quickly would be a "formula for disaster".

I kid you not.

Don't blame the left when Bush spent like a drunken sailor . Remember Cheney's famous quote " deficits don't matter " ?

they fair solution is to bring back the pre reagan era tax rates for corporations and the rich . the zionist agenda of greed of wall street , corporations and the bankers , must be reversed somehow .

Yet Owebama's addminastration want's to raise the debt limit even higher. I wish I can do that.