First, let me say that I agree completely with your expectation of government. Seeing to the needs of its citizens is, after all, the primary purpose of government at any level.
However, I have to take exception to the reasoning behind your post, and hopefully show you why I do so.
"The government is funded using our hard-earned tax dollars; our senators aren’t mining coal to fund the government. Even when the government borrows money, it is still our tax dollars that are paying the interest."
When looking at the spending process of our federal government we must not apply reasoning we acquired via our own experience with money. We are "users" of the US dollar, as are all others not the federal government. Congress has a unique position in this as it is the monopoly "issuer" of US dollars, which are sovereign fiat currency used to denominate all federal contracts and commerce.
Taxes play an important part in our monetary system, but that is not to "fund" spending for the one entity, Congress, that has an infinite amount of dollars available and can afford anything that is priced in those dollars even without a penny of "revenue". In fact, since dollars must exist before they can be collected, it is more accurate to state that spending dollars into existence "funds" our ability to pay taxes or purchase Treasury bonds.
Taxes serve mainly to deplete reserves (cash) from our banking system and they do so by balancing against the debt that created them. Once this balance occurs the money representing tax payments is no longer available to be recycled into new spending. "ALL" federal spending is via new dollar creation, and always was.
Bonds do the same, except on a voluntary temporary basis with a dividend payed for investors willing to give up the liquidity of their reserves for the maturity duration of the bond. Once again, the monopoly issuer of dollars never needs its own dollars back to enable spending so bond sales isn't "borrowing" in the normal sense.
Paying interest on bonds is no more difficult than paying for anything else and encourages thrift. There is no market that determines how much a bond should pay and the issuer is always the rate setter, giving banks a floor price of money to set their rates from.
Once you realize the truth of these statements your anger at your government will increase by multiples because you will understand that "ANY" suffering in this rich country that can be mitigated with US dollars is entirely a political decision made because someone in power wants that suffering to continue.
