Since When Are Health Care And College Entitlements “Basic” Functions Of Government?

My jaw dropped while reading the opening paragraph of today’s Bismarck Tribune editorial:

The desire to use the North Dakota’s more than $1 billion surplus on many good things will be high. In terms of spending the surplus, the Legislature needs to deal with the basics education, corrections, basic health care for vulnerable citizens and roads and bridges before addressing other valid needs.

My first reaction was “so I guess we’ve decided to just blow the whole surplus again, expand the size of government, and hope like hell the tax revenues keep going up so we can afford it.”
My second reaction was, “wait, health care is a basic role of government?” When did that happen?
For me, the basics have always been things like roads. Fire departments. Police departments. Water and sewage infrastructure. Health care entitlements aren’t, nor should they ever be, in that mix. And not even for our “vulnerable citizens.”
Because that “vulnerable citizens” feint is the leading, bloody edge of socialized medicine. First the big-government types get those who can’t or won’t help themselves hooked on government, then they use that leverage to her everyone else onto the entitlement plantation. That’s why Democrats have been pushing an expansion of the SCHIP program so hard. Not because they want to help people who aren’t being helped (SCHIP already provides health insurance to families making well over the poverty level) but because they want to have more people dependent on the government. That’s the ultimate goal.
More people dependent on the government means more power and prestige for the powers-that-be in government.
The same is true of higher education spending. In this modern era, we have too many kids going to college as it is. We have kids going to college, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a degree, and then finding out once they enter the job market that they never really needed that degree to begin with.
Have you ever noticed when some government agency starts advertising a new program available and encouraging citizens to sign up? Ever noticed when some bureaucrat or politician measures the level of success for such a program by the number of people who are on it?
Our goal shouldn’t be a nation of citizens on government programs. Our goal should be empower citizens to provide for themselves. A good start to that is letting them keep more of their own money, particularly when there’s a $1 billion surplus laying around.