If we've heard it once, we've heard it a thousand times. "Washington is broken." Given the gift of the most prosperous and powerful economy in human history, our politicians somehow created an unmanageable fiscal monster. Despite (or because of?) high taxes, we have extraordinary deficits at the federal and state level, with some of the highest tax states facing the worst crises. And the fingers point everywhere. Public pensions bust the budget. Millions of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers bust the budget. Health care busts the budget. The Bush tax cuts bust the budget. An almost decade-long war busts the budget.

While partisans squabble over the policy causes of our problems, everyone seemed to agree that it was Washington's fault (Congress hit record lows in approval through bipartisan revulsion). So we tossed the bums out, placed the Speaker's gavel in not-exactly-new hands, and now the airwaves are ablaze with vows to hold the new majority accountable—to make sure that they serve the great and good American people in a manner that befits, well, our greatness and goodness.

Here's a prediction: The new congress will land in Washington and discover the same reality that faced their "revolutionary" predecessors, pass budgets that don't differ dramatically from the budgets that came before, and pray fervently that the mighty American economy pulls their chestnuts out of the fire.

And why won't this congress be much different from the last? Because we the people are not much different. Because our three great fiscal majorities have not changed, and those three great fiscal majorities—not Congress, not the president, and not "Washington"—are leading us to ruin.

First, it is absolutely clear that a majority of Americans do not want tax increases. I know that some will counter that "tax increases for the rich" poll well, and I know that some deep blue congressional districts never met a tax they didn't like, but on the national scale, tax increases are almost always unpopular. Ask Walter Mondale. Ask George H. W. "Read My Lips" Bush. Ask Bill Clinton, whose party got crushed in the 1994 mid-terms shortly after he passed his own tax increase.

Second, it is similarly clear that a majority of Americans are at least concerned with deficits, with the level of their concern waxing and waning depending on underlying economic conditions. But few Americans will admit to being untroubled by national debt, and fewer still in today's Tea Party era. Obama deficit charts have rocketed around the Internet, and stories of European fiscal meltdowns have only heightened anxiety. Big deficits are bad, and (almost) everyone agrees.

Does anyone see inconsistencies between the first two majorities? Some would say yes, that a nation can't lower deficits without raising taxes. I say that you can, that lower taxes and lower deficits are entirely possible, entirely responsible, and that we can achieve such a reality through responsible spending cuts. But this argument runs headlong into the third fiscal majority, the entitlement majority.