The politicians make running government sound complex.

Day after day, they lecture us about the impenetrable budget and the rough time they have trying to “fix” Social Security, or reckoning a way to “pay for” tax cuts and the “war against terrorism.”

Like the brightly accoutered priests of a savage tribe, the political prestidigitators would have the unwashed masses, meaning us taxpayers, believe it’s all a big mystery beyond our limited comprehension.

What a lie.

A case in point concerns the president’s contentious tax cuts now under debate in the House and Senate.

The president’s “package” began at $750 billion, but then decreased to $550 billion. Now, his own party says even $450 billion might well be impossible. That kind of cut, Reuters reports, would require “financial juggling.”

“I can say flat out, it’s going to be difficult to get to 550,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa told “Fox News Sunday.” “It might not be difficult to get to $425 billion or $450 billion. But remember, it’s got to be dollar for dollar [in offsets].”

On “Meet The Press,” another forum for the scripted lie, Sen. George Voinovich, a “budget hawk” from Ohio, said even $450 billion would be tough: “$350 billion is a responsible package, and if the president wants to do more than that . . . let’s pay for it. Let’s offset it.”

No one with half a brain believes any such thing, the unspoken assumption being that all the government these men want is legitimate.

Bad assumption. It’s not “difficult” to get to $550 billion, and a trillion-dollar tax cut would be a cinch. We simply obliterate all unconstitutional government.

We start with closing the welfare and regulatory cabinet departments: Education, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture and Health and Human Services. The Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies are shuttered; the bureaucrats fired, the furniture sold.

We abolish Social Security, while providing for the old people hoodwinked into giving their life savings to Republicrat boodlers.

The national “endowments” for the Art, the Humanities and Democracy and any other government “grant” program are dumped. No more money for homosexual pornographers and sculptors, or novelists, or left-wing PBS propaganda, or corrupt foreign gangsters.

The warfare and foreign policy bureaucracies are stripped. Troop strength is slashed 50 percent; the globe-spanning imperial Army and Navy stands down; the troops come home. All foreign aid ends, as do all contributions to the United Nations and any other organization, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Export-Import Bank, et al.

The income tax is repealed.

Pretty simple, when you think about it that way, but no one thinks about it that way.

The parasitic political and bureaucratic elites want more power, not less. Party and ideology are irrelevant, as Grassley and his ilk well prove. They are devoted to collectivism and the imperial Leviathan state, not to the free market and a peaceful Constitutional republic.

So day in and day out, with the media’s help, they lie. We have a “budget crisis” only “financial juggling” can fix. We need “tax cuts,” but must find enough “offsets.”

Our national problem isn’t too much to do and too little money to do it. The problem is collectivist politicians and unconstitutional government. And the repair is no mystery.

Get rid of both.

R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: [email protected].