IDEOLOGUE CONSERVATIVES DO NOT WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT PEOPLE WITH MONEY IT DOES NOT HAVE

Opponents of the Ike Dike, which would protect thousands of lives and properties in the Houston-Galveston area from hurricanes, insist it should not be built using taxpayer dollars when the government doesn’t have any money

The U.S. debt is almost $20 trillion. Attempts to reduce that debt have met with scant success. That means every penny the government spends is money it really doesn’t have.

The proposed Ike Dike would protect thousands of lives and properties in the Houston-Galveston area from hurricanes. When originally proposed, the construction of flood gates and sea walls was estimated to cost $5 billion. By now its construction would probably cost closer to $15 billion.

Ideologue conservatives oppose the Ike Dam because they do not want the government to spend money it does not have. Rather than using taxpayer dollars to build the Ike Dike, they say screw those people because they should never have moved into flood-prone and storm-surge areas to begin with.

Most of us would prefer the government did not spend money it does not have. But do those, like the Ike Dike opponents, who are dead set against the government spending taxpayer dollars it does not have realize what they are saying?

By their reasoning the government should stop spending any money until it is out of debt and has the funds to pay for all expenditures.

For now that means no spending for defense, for homeland security, for congress, for the executive branch, for the judiciary, etc., etc. In other words, the government would consist of only one agency, and that is the IRS until it collects enough in taxes so that we are out of debt. And only God knows how many years it will take to get us out from under that $20 trillion debt.

Nowadays conservatives get all exercised at the mere mention of illegal immigration. But shutting down everything except the IRS would, among other things, mean our borders would be left unguarded with no one to stop the incoming tsunami of illegal immigrants.

No Defense Department, no Homeland Security, no federal government of any kind except for the IRS. Sound farfetched? Not if you don’t want the government to spend any money it doesn’t have.