"Meanwhile, they continue bleeding public funds dry."
This is the core belief (supported by a massive and coordinated propaganda campaign that even many "progressives" buy into) that enables the vast inequality that America has become known for.
THERE ARE NO "PUBLIC" FUNDS (or taxpayer money) AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL.
The federal government is the monopoly creator of the US dollar and has an infinite number of them available to spend for whatever it wishes. It is even "mandated" by the Constitution to "coin" the money as necessary "for the common welfare" (Article 1: Section 8). This was purposefully separated from its authority to tax by our founders long before the Fed or modern banking existed.
Taxation serves several purposes, but "funding" the government isn't one of them, as the US dollar is, and always was, self funding when it is created. That creation takes place when the Treasury pays for things in the private sector that were contracted for by Congress. When the money reenters the government sector it is "uncreated" by the debt that it was created from and they balance to zero. Money doesn't survive this since it was, and remains, simply a "tax credit" to the Treasury.
The "national debt" is nothing more than a mostly meaningless accounting entity meant to track those tax credits in the private sector, but it is also our "net" money supply after private bank debt is balanced with reserve credit. It is our national "savings" left in the economy above taxation to serve as a store of value for our commerce and to enable bank credit to be retired.
As ridiculous as it may seem, any attempt to pry the wealth away from the present day oligarchy will run into a very concerted opposition of politicians, dishonest economists, and much of the libertarian conservative base hollering about "job creators" and taxation as "theft". If we continue to treat the federal budget/spending as our own kitchen table budget process and strive for a "paid for" budget we only draw down existing currency/money in the private sector, unnecessarily enlisting the best funded and organized opposition on earth, forcing all spending debate to fight on two fronts.
If we, as we have for over four decades, then tie our spending to this ability to tax we are beaten before we even debate the merit of such spending for the public purpose. The wealthy do very well simply by virtue of the income gap and guaranteed gains offered by Treasury and would rather take that guaranteed security than allow closing the gap with their workers any more than necessary. The Fed policy has always been to use involuntary unemployment from higher interest rates as insurance against workers making any real headway on that gap that they don't have to finance with private bank debt as they did during Clinton's dotcom bubble and government "surplus" budgets.
As the Fed creates unemployment for workers it also increases the income of bond investors. Nice work if you can get it, especially considering that the currency necessary to purchase bonds was originally created by "deficit spending" of Congress. That is the only source of US dollars and every "debt" of government is someone's monetary asset in the private sector, making bonds unnecessary except to provide a reward for thrift and satisfy the public desire to save.
The best way to deal with the wealthy is to make them irrelevant to our nation's spending on the public purpose by simply creating the money we need for that. Once it becomes evident that there are no "job creators" besides the federal government in reality the people will soon see to it that the wealthy are made considerably less wealthy and demand legislation that prevents their unlimited access to our political system.
