The two trillion dollar debt figure is similarly misrepresented. It ignores the fact that this is the cost of transition to the new system, and that not fundamentally altering Social Security will, when the payment in is less than the payment out, lead to a much higher amount of debt than what will at that time look like a measly two trillion dollars. This one or two trillion dollar debt comes from the fact that since the government does not actually use most Social Security money to fund actual Social Security (remember, it goes into bonds), then the government will have to find the funds for those programs elsewhere. To this, there is a simple solution, albeit one that those in power find it hard to implement: reduce government spending; reduce the size and power of the federal government. Using the extra burden of these mostly unconstitutional programs in order to argue against reducing another program is like saying that shutting down a drug lord's heroin operation will cause him to have to seek funds somewhere to continue his coke program. The drug lord shouldn't be dealing drugs, the federal government shouldn't be in the business of providing anything but dead terrorists and jailed interstate criminals for us.
I'd probably quit bitchin' if the government limited itself to Social Security and AFDC - you could even roll food stamps into that, as far as going beyond the clear intent of the Constitution. (You want more? Pass an amendment! America would probably go for a Welfare Amendment these days. ...They won't because that'd be admitting that the plain words of the Constitution exclude most of what they're up to these days.)
But, speaking federalistically (coin a new word every day, I always say), there is nothing forbidding the states from doing these things. They're supposed to experiment and find out what works.
I'd like to say more, but I'll practice refraint (coined by F.A. Hayek, though it never took off--so few people think we need any of that).
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