Something akin to financial panic is gripping many of the British these days. Their lawmakers for years have lavished tax dollars on all manner of government programs, including the notoriously inefficient, government-run National Health Service.
But the time has come to pay the piper - as it always does, eventually. So Britain's government is having to slash about $128 billion from its budget in a desperate attempt to get its crippling debt under control. As one example, about 4,000 government jobs just in the city of Birmingham, England, are being cut. Then there are huge increases in college tuition - increases that have led to rioting by students in some cities.
And yet, British officials say they have only just begun to make the cuts they will have to make to correct what Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke called the nation's "calamitous" budget position. The real pain hasn't even started, he told The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Still, at least Britain seems to have awakened to the fact that its government cannot be all things to all people (or provide all things to all people) and stay financially afloat.
Here in the United States, though, President Barack Obama has proposed a $3.73 trillion budget for 2012 that does not even seriously begin to address the problem of our more than $14 trillion national debt. He wants only superficial "cuts" - coupled with tens of billions of dollars in more spending for impractical schemes such as high-speed trains and electric vehicles. The very limited cuts he is willing to propose do not come close to those recommended last year even by his own "blue-ribbon" deficit-reduction commission.
He still seems to hold the view that he can get the economy moving through "stimulus" spending - even though the existing $862 billion stimulus demonstrably failed to keep its promise of holding down unemployment, but did add to our debt.
Some nations seem to be getting the message that uncontrolled debt destroys economic growth. But our own president, convinced that more government spending is the answer, refuses to hear that message.