The other day I was reminiscing about the 1950s and 1960s and I wonder how we arrived at the state that our nation is now in.

During high school I worked part time at an independent auto parts store making something like 75 cents an hour and yet I had more than enough money to do what I wanted. It’s not that life itself was all that easy because we lived in a massive three-story house heated with a huge coal-fired furnace that seemingly devoured tons of coal each and every day. Now we live in a nation with a federal debt over $17 trillion to say nothing about state and local debt along with our personal debt, which is far greater.

I sense it’s no wonder that our federal government has run out of money because our elected officials became addicted to their credit cards. Unfortunately you and I are the credit cards I am writing about here. Just like in our lives when we run out of money, the government has to figure out a new method to increase its piggy banks or it has to decrease spending, and it’s high time that happens.

Recently, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (the old food stamp program) cut its allotment to families because Congress cut the federal budget even though I believe all it was is a shift in where the money is being spent. I have also read several articles where programs for heating assistance and even Section 8 housing are facing cuts.

Before one begins to think I want to increase government spending, I don’t. Government at any level has a strange habit of making decisions that favor the outcome that it wants. Take schools for instance. When they believe we are not paying enough taxes, they threaten to cut sports or other popular programs in order to cause parents to hiss and scream at the top of their lungs, after which school officials proclaim a tax hike is the only solution. During the recent government shutdown caused by the deadheads in Washington, every effort was made to make us feel the pain of them running out of our money. I have but one question to ask. Did the government stop collecting taxes during that needless shutdown? You and I both know that didn’t happen along with the Congress and president receiving their pay as usual while many government workers were not.

Since I mentioned the shutdown, did you know it’s federal law that the Congress and the president set a federal budget and yet it has been a long time since a real federal budget has been passed. We see measures that keep the government operating and paying its bills with the exception of the federal debt where we pay more and more interest every year. If my research is correct, the last time we had a true federal budget that was signed into law was 1997 by President Clinton and Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. There have been partial budgets and stopgap measures but nary a true budget under President Obama.

The problem with a real federal budget is that the Congress and president would have to live with it. Even though elected officials in Washington passed a measure called the Sequesterm which supposedly cut the federal budget, all it did was slow the increase of that budget. When and if someone actually gets control of government spending, maybe we will know how much Obamacare and the National Security Agency are really costing the taxpayers.

Even the town of Windham bears watching when it comes to spending tax dollars. Way too often we have heard from town officials that as the taxes from the commercial district increase, the burden on residential owners will lessen. The best I can gather is that the Windham Economic Development Committee wants funds from TIFs in North Windham. I believe their goal should be to bring in new businesses, not create one for themselves.

Lane Hiltunen, of Windham, believes it’s time to consolidate law enforcement agencies, which is the topic of a future column.