April 15 was not only tax payment day, but Tax Day Tea Party day as well. Estimates vary on how many attended the events across the nation, but it seems to be more than 600,000 and, in Washington state, an estimated 5,000 people crowded the steps of the Capitol building.

As a would-be participant, I know this wasn’t a “manufactured” event, an anti-Obama rally or a collection of crackpots, but a cross-section of average Americans frustrated by years of runaway government spending. Anger at our exploding national debt, out-of-control earmarks and a lack of confidence in our elected representatives finally were funneled into one nationwide event – and the tea parties were it.

Here in Washington, excessive government spending has resulted in an $8 billion shortfall. Whatever happened to the $800 million surplus Gregoire touted during a September 2008 debate with Rossi? How did we get from plus $800 million to minus $8 billion in seven months?

Turns out our state spending has increased $8,000,000,000 since Gregoire was elected in 2004. Turns out the Democrat-controlled Legislature illegally bypassed the spending limits of voter-approved Initiative 601 by shifting money from one account to another and deferring $325,000,000 owed the state pension fund. Turns out Democrats also did away with the requirement of a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and took away voter’s veto power by repeatedly attaching the emergency clause to non-emergency legislation, like funding the Mariner’s stadium and SB5951 and creating a death tax in 2005.

This wasn’t what our founding fathers had in mind. Their insistence that even national war debts be paid of in one generation is diametrically opposed to the “saddle our grandkids” spending of today.

It has to stop. It’s not government’s job to take care of everyone. We have to stop demanding it – and government has to stop providing it.

Reach Auburn resident Karen Shepherd at karen.shepherd@rocketmail.com.