Well, I agree that the government should learn how to balance the budget.
The problem with your philosophy is that government helped you to earn your money. The services that are provided by government and society helped enable you to earn your money. If there was anarchy and no government at all, you wouldn't earn as much money as you do. Thus, it is only fair that you would help pay for the system that enables you and others to make money in the first place.
I think you're right in principle. The argument is over the LEVEL of government intervention, not the fact of it.
The argument will never end. Liberals argue for ever-increasing government intervention that will gobble up more and more of our income in taxes, while conservatives want less government intervention. Finding the right balance is the key.
The GI Bill is an example of a government program that worked fantastically. It took highly motivated people and gave them a chance that they would not have otherwise had to better themselves, and it benefitted society as a whole greatly.
Unfortunately, many government programs today are viewed by their "beneficiaries" as a means to get other people to for them what they ought to be doing for themselves. I don't have a problem so much with the level of government spending, but with the way in which much of it is being spent.
The problem is not as bad since welfare reform. The now-defunct AFDC program was an example of the absolute worst form of government intervention, in paying single women to have children they could not support or raise properly. It sent illegitimacy rates, particularly among blacks, through the roof, with devastating consequences that can't be fixed with any amount of money.
A tax cut agenda acts as a necessary counterbalance to the liberal inclination to endlessly expand government spending and its share of the economy, with all the deliterious social effects that come along with the entitlement programs that liberals like to create.
