Former aides to Gov. Ehrlich and Gov. O’Malley are joining with former Rep. Wayne Gilchrest and others in a campaign to avert the looming “fiscal cliff.” I’d love to avoid catastrophe as much as the next guy, but this cast of characters doesn’t fill me with hope. Aides to two big-spending governors and a congressman who was never known for his fiscal discipline seem a strange crew to talk about fiscal restraint. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear this group won’t do much to educate the public and make both liberals and conservatives face the facts about government spending.

Too often in this state the stories about cutting federal spending focus on how many Maryland jobs will be lost. While I certainly sympathize for anyone who loses a job, the purpose of government spending isn’t to create jobs. It’s to provide certain services. If these services are unnecessary or can be done better by someone else or somewhere else or if it’s just too expensive to do these services, then they shouldn’t be done.

We shouldn’t resist cutting government spending merely because it will hurt our state’s economy. In fact, we shouldn’t resist cutting government spending because it hurts our personal economy or goes against our political views. But too often, that’s how both liberals and conservatives approach balancing the budget.

Conservatives want to cut welfare and food stamps, demonizing the woman in Wal Mart who uses her EBT card to pay for junk food. But there is little appetite to cut the welfare payments to farmers or to trim Social Security and Medicare benefits, two programs that contribute far more to our fiscal problems than TANF and SNAP. They want to cut foreign aid, but balk at any politician who even utters a word about possibly reducing our support to Israel (our largest foreign aid recipient). And every tax credit or low-interest loan proposal that comes along to benefit business usually finds a receptive audience among conservatives.

Liberals have their own blind spots. They think we can somehow balance the budget by taxing the “rich,” however that group is defined. They like to blame the Bush Administration for tax cuts and expensive foreign wars and forget that these ventures were supported by members of both parties. They ignore the fact that Medicare and Social Security have to be made less generous if our nation has any hope of being fiscally solvent within a few decades. And any call to reduce payments or benefits to government workers is a non-starter.

Of course, there are exceptions to these broad generalizations. Policy wonks on either side of the ideological spectrum generally recognize the truth about these matters, even if they differ on how to fix them. But if the comments on news stories, on Facebook, and in conversation haven’t misled me, the general public just doesn’t seem to get it.

Politicians generally aren’t leaders; they are followers. They don’t want to tell the hard truths to voters; they want to repeat platitudes that confirm what voters already believe. And if voters hold flawed views on our inevitable fiscal crisis, then we can’t expect much better from our politicians.

Both conservatives and liberals need to recognize the unpleasant truths about government spending. If this bipartisan group in Maryland can make this happen, then I’m all in favor of that. But I’m not going to hold my breath.