With No Rehab In Sight, U.S. Pols' Spending Habit Grows Exponentially
There is a peculiar cruelty to addiction, and it lies in this: the addict cannot stop himself.
Not with reason, not with pleading; nor even with the slow corrosion of consequences creeping like black mold up the walls of his existence.
The bottle, the needle, and the next hit become not choices but all or nothing imperatives.
And so it is in Washington, D.C.
There are our modern politicians resemble a gallery of jittery junkies, pacing the fluorescent halls of Congress, eyes darting, hands trembling — not for fentanyl or meth, but for the next hit of spending.
Trillions here, trillions there, yet another agency with layers of bureaucracy created here and there as well, until the very language of fiscal restraint seems quaint — a relic from a black-and-white America where people still balanced checkbooks and presidents vetoed bills.
The United States national debt now stands at a vertigo-inducing $36 trillion and climbs with the punctuality of sunrise.
We are, to put it delicately, a country mainlining borrowed money with the feverish desperation of a man who long ago sold his furniture for alcohol and drugs, who is now eyeing the wallpaper.
The political class, in both red ties and blue, are united in their addiction.
Indeed, they are bipartisan only in two areas: war and welfare.
One feeds the empire, the other feeds the electorate.
Both costs oh so much more than we have.
Asking a modern politician to curtail spending is like asking a lifelong alcoholic to sip instead of chug.
He may nod, sweat, promise — but he will drink.
And spend.
And . . . lie.
Consider the rhetorical needle they've weaponized so deftly: "Free Stuff." Free college, healthcare, phones, rent, broadband, free meals, free rides, free heat.
A staggering number of Americans have now been conditioned — no, taught — that they are owed something, anything, everything, simply for drawing breath in this great land.
And let's not forget the message we have been sending to our illegal friends.
The old ethos — of work, thrift, and rugged individualism — has been quietly euthanized, wrapped in a flag, and buried beneath a pile of student loan forgiveness applications.
In its place is a grotesque entitlement culture where the most potent campaign slogan isn't "Yes We Can," but "Why Don't I Already Have It?"
Our political junkies, of course, feed this delusion because, in the short term, it's a wildly effective narcotic.
Promise free stuff, and votes flow like beer at a fraternity reunion, one held in a beer garden.
Half-numbed by Kardashian culture and TikTok economics, the electorate laps it up.
And the bill?
Ah, that pesky thing, that invoice, is pushed off until some mythical future date — one that never seems to arrive except on the ledgers of our grandchildren.
Make no mistake: this is not mere incompetence.
It's codependency in its most extreme forms.
The politicians are the pushers, but what about "We the People"?
We aren't innocent in this either.
We are often the ones demanding the next fix!
We're governed not by tyrants but enablers — who administer our national decline in soft doses, coated in compassion and wrapped in the narcotic language of "equity" and "social justice."
Meanwhile, the debt metastasizes.
Entitlement spending now devours over 70% of the federal budget.
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — all sacred cows mooing sweet lullabies to the electorate while silently draining the U.S. Treasury like a tenured vampire.
Add in unfunded liabilities, and the actual debt exceeds $100 trillion — a figure so outrageous it begins to resemble fiction, like dragons, or competent DMV employees.
And what of interest payments?
Soon to eclipse military spending, they are the financial equivalent of paying your drug dealer to keep your teeth from falling out.
There is no internal remedy for this.
No congressional AA meeting.
No 12-step plan to get clean.
The addiction is too deep, the rewards too tempting, the withdrawal too painful.
Like any addict, we'll only change after something catastrophic happens — a default, a currency crisis, a collapse of faith in the dollar. And even then, it's a coin flip.
I do not write these words as an optimist. I write them as someone who has studied the human appetite for fantasy and knows its potency. We are in the Age of Delusion — governed by addicts, cheered on by dependents, and paid for by children not yet born.
Unless there is some radical outside intervention — divine or otherwise — this ends quite badly.
Very badly. History offers us no examples to the contrary.
No empire survives its addiction to debt.
Not Rome, not France, not Spain, not Britain. And certainly not us — not while we mistake reckless generosity for moral virtue and confuse spending with compassion.
The junkie on the Potomac doesn't need another loan.
He needs an intervention.
But for now, the only thing that is raining down from Washington isn't restraint — it's IOUs. And the piper, rest assured, will demand his payment with interest, "a pound of flesh," and oh so much more.
Michael Levine is an American writer and public relations expert. He's the author of books on public relations including Guerrilla PR. He's represented 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, and 43 New York Times best-sellers, including Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and George Carlin, among others. Mr. Levine also appeared in "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," a 2011 documentary by Morgan Spurlock. He's provided commentary for Variety, Forbes, Fox News, The New York Times, and USA Today. Read More of Michael Levine's Reports — Here.
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