Can American Elections Be Bought ?

Can American elections be bought?  I don't mean in the traditional sense of buying votes and bribing people for their votes, I mean in the sense of raiding the US Treasury to give benefits to people in exchange for their votes.

That is the subject of an editorial in Friday's Washington Examiner.  The Federal Reserve points out in a recent report that there are "widespread signs of deceleration" in our economy following a "burst" of growth in the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.  The burst of growth was triggered by the Obama stimulus spending, unfortunately special interests like unions and public employees were the only people who were stimulated by the stimulus.  At the same time the government reports that Americans are spending less.  They are tightening their belts and hunkering down because they don't know what will happen next. 

The editorial explains:

"According to the Heritage Foundation's 2010 Index of Dependence on Government, the number of Americans receiving a government check jumped nearly 14 percent in 2009 - the largest single-year increase since 1970 and 49 percent higher than in 2001. In May, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the portion of personal income Americans received from private sector paychecks declined to a record low of 41.9 percent, while income from government programs climbed 17.9 percent.   And with nearly half of American wage earners now paying no federal income taxes, the burden of increasing levels of government spending on housing, health care, welfare, education and other entitlements is being borne by a shrinking pool of taxpayers."

The bottom line here is that more people have become dependent on the government while the number of jobs in the private sector is shrinking.  At the same time, fewer people are paying taxes and have any interest in what the tax rates are.  In plain English, as fewer people 'have skin in the game' in the rate of taxation, there is nothing to stop Congress from raising taxes on the people who do pay them.

The editorial mentioned a relevant quote:

"Alexis de Tocqueville prophetically warned, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.""

The question will be whether or not the public will agree to be bribed.