Most of us can agree that our Uncle Sam is too darn generous for his own good — and our own good, for that matter, since we’re sending a lot of our hard-earned bucks to him to help pay the bills.

Now mind you, he has a lot of help spreading the cash around. He’s got all those members of Congress who are so used to doling out money that they’re desensitized to the actual value of everything. What’s a few million here and a billion there?

Our favorite uncle, the federal government, even gets some help passing out the bucks from people who worry that spending has gotten out of hand.

How’s that?

It starts with the duly elected senators and representatives who understand the best way to keep the voting folks back home happy is to deliver some of the federal largess to pump up the local economy.

Naturally, the home crowd is glad to see some of their tax dollars working to improve their lot — you know, things like military bases or crop and commodity subsidies.

But one man’s boon is another man’s boondoggle.

It’s a fact that government spending is so intertwined with the entire economy of our nation that significant reductions in the status quo could put a damper on lots of communities throughout the land.

So this injects a level of hypocrisy into the attitude that government needs to cut back. For instance, any time the closing of a military base to save money is proposed, you can bet the people who live in the area will rally around efforts to save the facility. They don’t want to see businesses close and their fellow townspeople losing their jobs because of the closure. So they’ll shout about how essential the base is and how it needs to be saved.

And yet, many of these same folks are convinced that government spending is way out of hand. They just want the reductions to happen somewhere else — in a way that it’s no skin off their noses.

Truth of the matter is, federal government has so many fingers in so many pies that true across-the-board budget trimming would cause some pain in nearly every community in the land.

No member of Congress is willing to stand up and say, “Well, a reduction in cotton subsidies would hurt my district and anger lots of my constituents, but I’m willing go along with the idea.”

And, of course, subsidies all involve some essential to the American way of life. For instance, corn and ethanol research are sold as a hedge against dependence on foreign oil. But that became such a cause that there was a shortage of corn for food production, which drove up prices for consumers everywhere. Now there’s food for thought and fuel for debate.

So where does Uncle Sam cut back? He’s got a lynch mob demanding the reductions, but many of them don’t want the process to start in their back yard.

There’s no good answer, but we all know deep down that we can’t continue riding this ever-expanding spiral of spending. So it really becomes a matter of realizing that sacrifice has to be added into the equation.

And then comes the ultimate question — are we a strong enough nation to quit talking about the spending addiction and do something about it?