We the people don’t agree on what government should do. Democrats push, Republicans pull, add in other interest groups and well – it’s complicated.

Perhaps the best indicator of what we want federal government to do is its budget. Don’t look for an actual federal budget – parties haven’t been able to agree on one of those for years. Instead, we get spending bills that keep things going short term. The bill most recently passed was over 2,000 pages, in case you’re looking for a good read. Anyway … here are the numbers for 2017-2018 (in millions) from the federal Office of Management and Budget:

n 2017: $3,316,182 in receipts; $3,918,554 in outlays; a deficit of $665,372; $20,539,705 in end-of-year federal debt.

n 2018: $3,340,360 in receipts; $4,172,992 in outlays; a deficit of $832,632; $21,478,237 (estimated) in end-of-year federal debt.

Summing up, by 2017, we’re $20 trillion-plus in debt. In 2018, with the economy doing well, we’ve given huge tax cuts when we should be paying down the debt. Add another estimated $800 billion to the deficit for this year and wow, is this ever not sustainable.

Republicans have relentlessly decried Democrats as the party of tax and spend. Well, what are they but the party of “cut taxes and spend even more”? And in all fairness, Democrats as well as Republicans voted for the latest spending bill, and the president signed it. Financial geniuses!

It seems we love spending “government” money but we hate raising it. We are either going to raise more revenue, or cut the hell out of a lot of stuff, or keep deficit spending ourselves off whatever fiscal cliff that leads to. There’s no easy way out. So, where is the debate? Or perhaps we should just start a GoFundMe page and pray.

Roy Estabrook

North Monmouth