Robert Samuelson sez:

We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can't easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government's very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.

Samuelson analysis is quite correct, even if his metaphor is ridiculous.

The U.S. Government isn't suicidal. A suicide ceases to exist, leaving family and friends to grieve. Big Government isn't going anywhere. It will continue to be at war with itself and the appetites of the American people. But it won't put a bullet through its own brain. It will continue to ineffectively lord over the country.

The $38 billion in budget cuts the GOP managed to wring out of the president and his party, are miniscule compared with what needs to be done to bring the deficit under control. They are the equivalent of an 800-pound, morbidly obese man losing an ounce and declaring the pain and sacrifice of it all.

America may be "suicidal" for continuing to elect a large number of unserious Democrats (and Republicans) to office, but the government's will to live and expand is as healthy as ever.