Government spending and waste

By John Raymond Beckman

Lodi has an excellent credit rating and a track record of being a fiscally responsible steward of tax dollars. I intend to keep it that way.

If a private company increases spending it must either increase revenues to match or it will soon cease to exist. Government is not held to the same standard. If government increases spending all it has to do is raise taxes to cover the increase. There is no incentive however to cut costs and lots of reasons to increase spending, votes. It is easy for politicians to make voters happy by spending more tax dollars. Unfortunately that is the beginning of the long-term downfall of a democracy.

My opinions on this matter come from Alexander Fraser Tytler (1742-1813), Professor of History at Edinburgh University and Judge Advocate of Scotland.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."

The Federal, State, County and City of Lodi governments has been given a very specific and defined role in our society. I believe that government in general has overstepped those bounds. The City of Lodi is very fortunate in that it has had fiscally conservative and responsible leaders, I intend to continue that trend. In determining the proper role of government I rely on statesmen of the past for guidance. I have studied hundreds of historical sources regarding methods and means of leading/governing people, from Aristotle and Plato to Winston Churchill and Collin Powell.

I feel the most important concept to remember about government spending is as follows:

"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with others people's money. Well, who isn't?" -- P.J. O'Rourke

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...." James Madison

"I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity, [such spending] would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." --President Franklin Pierce

"I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds. .. I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution." --President Grover Cleveland