Here’s just one more example of why we have trillion-dollar deficits:

…the EAS program has mushroomed into a airline routing program based on political favors. And the subsidy doesn’t go to the traveling public; it goes to the air carriers. The $3,700 per passenger subsidy, for example, has been championed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who fought and won the earmark for keeping open air service for Ely, Nevada (population: 4,000).

How inefficient is the EAS program? While the Feds pay out $3,700 per passenger to airlines to fly from Ely to Las Vegas, Southwest Airlines sells tickets for Las Vegas to Chicago nonstop for as little as $153 one-way — about 10 cents per mile.

And no matter how much they claim to be in favor of small government, you can always find someone who will defend their own pet program:

Faye Malarkey Black, a vice president for the Regional Airline Association, said she believes few federal programs are worth it.

“They call it essential for a reason,” she told the Associated Press. She said her industry group supports “common sense adjustments” for eligibility, but added that rural communities already face many struggles to keep people from leaving.”If you take away air service, who wants to live in those communities?” she asked.

How and when did it become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer to ensure that rural communities don’t die? The American west is dotted with towns that came, and then, when there was no longer any economic justification for them, went. What is the benefit to someone in Florida to make sure that Muskegon, Michigan has air service, or that it exist at all (not that Muskegon is likely to go away for the lack of it — as the article notes, it’s only forty miles from Grand Rapids)? If we are going to solve our fiscal problems, we need to completely rethink the role of the federal government. That is the core of what next year’s election, now barely thirteen months away, should be about.