Fact is, we ARE going to have to cut off all the moochers to avoid the fiscal cliff.

[The Wizard]

9. Civil War reconstruction

should have ended years ago. The Confederate States have a habit of sending the same people to Congress year after year, no matter what they've done. Witness David Vitter of Louisiana who was know to the DC Madam for paying a prostitute to change his adult diaper that he deliberately soiled.
He's still in the Senate. The Confederate States will continue to get unwarranted funding because their legislators gain seniority with time served in Congress.
Because of this seniority, they get chairmanships of committees that determine what legislation will be considered and passed. In this way the taxes paid by the productive states get funneled to the nonproductive states, predominantly in conservative strongholds like the Confederacy.
Most of the military spending goes to the dependent states, hence the reluctance to cut military spending that is the biggest drain on the economy.
If the dependent states really want to live by the creed they espouse, it's time for them to make ends meet without the help from the productive states. It's time for them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps like President Obama did when he, as the child of a single mother, worked hard to achieve academic success and eventually translate that into the political success that make him the President of the United States.