Quantifying Compassion

So the administration tells us that failure to spend federal money on hiring police and teachers leads to more crime and less prepared students (respectively, I assume).

Fine. Have that argument. I assume that if the administration says that X amount for police and Y amount for teachers is what they want to spend, that others can't turn around and accuse them of killing people and impoverishing students if they don't spend X + A and Y + B on those programs.

Seriously, if spending less than what the administration wants is tantamount to Republicans allowing the killing and raping of people, why isn't failing to spend more than what the administration wants tantamount to the administration allowing killing and raping? Or is the amount the administration proposing the exact amount necessary to solve all the crime and teaching problems? But no, only spending less than what the administration proposes kills and endangers, right?

But that's not the really annoying part. What really annoys me is that even assuming that hiring local police and local teachers is the best thing in the world you should do, why is it the responsibility of the federal government to borrow that money to spend on those wonderful things? And why isn't it tantamount to allowing more murder and rape to refuse to take federal money spent on--oh I don't know, PBS and NPR?--and instead spend it on local education and police? Why is compassion only defined as taxing and borrowing more rather than making choices to live within our means?

Lord knows we seem to have abandoned concepts of personal responsibility. Are states and cities now freed from hard choices by the ever expanding compassionate federal government that promises to solve every problem? Good God, I think it is obvious our federal government can't do all that. But shouldn't we think it is obvious that the federal government shouldn't do all that?