Your neighbors to the south are in the same sinking ship. Kicking the can down the road.

My only addendum to your list is safety/national defense, I think that's at least as big a concern as the others you mentioned.

That said, the very problem is that politicians don't need to consider future outcomes when considering current legislation. They all have their pet projects, and frankly they were all elected by deep-pocket donors who expect their policy concerns to be prioritized. Those policy concerns are generally things that cost taxpayer money.

I think the US, given our current debt, is badly in need of a balanced budget amendment. We need to get our books in order, not necessarily to wipe out the debt but to start reigning it in. It'd be bad, bad news if interest rates jump to fairly reasonable, historic levels around 7 or 8% for any period of time, and between our entitlements and our debt we're slowly squeezing out everything else the government is supposed to be doing. This is pretty sobering:
https://www.forbes.com/...venues/#6f30f9e26a81

In 2013, the federal government collected $2.77 trillion and spent $3.45 trillion, according to the latest update from the U.S. Treasury Department. Entitlement programs accounted for about $2.34 trillion and interest on the $17 trillion federal debt was $221 billion. Taken together, that figure represented 92% of federal revenues, which means we are borrowing virtually all of the money needed to run and protect the country.

I hear ya, but to play devil's advocate just consider this snippet:


I think most would agree that public infrastructure like highways & bridges is a worthwhile investment, but even that is a large and nebulous concept when you try to drill down from sound bites to budget realities... The most general way I can think of phrasing it is how we collectively try to prioritize or mold behavior ~ for instance where do we wish to emphasize our investments between individual single-occupancy low-mileage vehicles vs mass transit, or bike/ped projects? And then if/when you accept that there's a worthwhile goal in shared efficiency of the transportation system, then it's a short step further to incentivizing things like conservation & electric vehicles or alternative energy development through taxing & spending policies.

Or if you want to use the heath care example, how far should we take the same taxing/spending (de-)incentives beyond direct provision of care, into other health-related activities like public education & outreach against smoking or other well-known hazards? If you can invest a little more in healthier choices among young people, shouldn't that end up saving the gov't more in the long run? But how do you measure that when the links between cause & effect are indirect or delayed by years if not decades?

I’ve never voted liberal federally,

But I kind of wish that we had some version of Paul Martin in there right now.

Maurice