I still think the American people want the government to pay their bills. If a candidate ran on an actual “Balanced Budget” and campaigned on it, boomers would eat it up!

I don't think that would stay true as soon as voters were faced with a detailed explanation of what a balanced budget (achieved by tax cuts alone) would look like. People say they don't like government. They say most of the spending is wasted. But when you point out specific spending programs (and what they actually do), they like them.

> I still think the American people want the government to pay their bills.

Not a comment on you, as I don't know you, but in my life experience all of the conservative-minded people I've known who bought into and parroted variations of the "welfare queen" myth were always the first in line for corporate welfare like subsidies, PPP/EIDL loans, and ZIRP benefits.

And actual American people I know who are not part of the top 10% work extremely hard and just want essential safety nets (of the type that nearly all other first-world countries manage to offer) so they don't have to worry about being homeless if they get an unexpected medical bill.

So I've always seen the idea that the non-well-off are just looking for handouts to do nothing as pure projection of the well-off as to what their mindset would be if they were less fortunate in their life circumstances.

Is there some small set of people who abuse the system (any system)? Yes, but I'm absolutely convinced a lot more people abuse the system at the high-end (for far greater overall cost) than at the low-end. And only people on one side of the scale are likely to ever face legal consequences for systemic abuse.

Ross Perot comes to mind, but I think he wanted to balance the budget mostly be cutting spending.