"In the know" on entitlement

With our country's crazy economic times, one fascinating and perhaps positive response from the public is surfacing. Individuals are finding themselves "in the know" or increasingly aware of government's management of their tax dollars. With this heightened awareness of government spending, entitlement policies are thoroughly scrutinized with opinions and suggestions cropping up like green grass after spring's first rainfall. Stuart M. Butler Ph.D, of Heritage Foundation makes several suggestions for the future of entitlement policies emphasizing the need to remember our future generations:

"In this vision of the future, therefore, social insurance programs would no longer be entitle ments without limits. Nor would they have an auto matic preemption of resources over the needs of other features of our social contract, such as educa tion and housing. And no longer would the finan cial interests of today's active and retired generations automatically take precedence over the financial interests of our grandchildren."

With so many people "in the know" regarding suggestions for policy making and in this case entitlement policy, can our leaders actually adopt some of these suggestions? Or, are they too enmeshed in the system of "i'll scratch your back if you loan me a billion dollars?"