How to balance the budget: a modest proposal

Randi Kreiss

Last week I attended a lecture by George Will, the columnist who proudly claims, with only a modicum of hyperbole, that he hasn’t approved of a president since Calvin Coolidge. That’s how conservative he is, that’s how pure his conservatism is, and if you don’t believe him, listen to how often he pays homage to James Madison, godfather of the Constitution.

As you can imagine, Will pretty much aggravated the hell out of me. Oh, he is against so many things: hope and change, old people who suck up too much of our money through entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

He refers to “70 percent” of African American children born to unwed mothers as a drain on our society, and the number of “preventable” illnesses like HIV, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which he suggests are basically self-inflicted by  immoderate indulgence in sex, food and camel watching from the living room couch.

Will sees big problems with the flood of immigrants coming over our southern borders, and he worries that the government is trying to control our lives, taxing us to death, quite literally, and regulating what we eat, how we drive, how Wall Street should do business and deciding which companies deserve bailouts.

Of course he hates the new health care reform law, the stimulus plans put into place by both Bush and Obama, and most “entitlement programs,” whether for the poor, the infirm or the elderly.

Will believes in individuality, personal achievement, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps and the inviolability of the Constitution. He thinks the minimum wage should be abolished and people should be responsible for financing their own retirement.

For one hour he spoke, peppering his diatribe with canned jokes that also go back to James Madison.