There seems to be a growing school of thought that government largesse is the easy street out of this economic mess we have made for ourselves.

The streets of our nation's capital are littered with well-groomed panhandlers who have hopped the gravy train from Wall Street, riding the rails to Washington to join the swelling bread line forming at Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s doorstep.

Each day brings urgent calls for relief from the get-the-government off-our-backs mob: for American International Group, for banks, for American Express and other credit crisis casualties who want to be banks, for Detroit's perpetually beleaguered Big Three, for all U.S. manufacturers.

Many of the welfare cases have something in common with the dinosaurs who dominated the earth millions of years ago. They are under the impression that they are too big too fail, a notion precious few are trying to dissuade them of. Has no one imagined what our world would be like if someone would have been around to make a case for the dinosaurs?

And each day, Mr. Paulson and his credit crisis cohort, in the twilight of serving their nation, whistle their way past the graveyard of moral hazard to deploy the $700 billion they have borrowed from future generations of U.S. taxpayers. It is up to them to make the tough choice of how to allocate the lubricant among those who can no longer sleep in the beds they have made for themselves.

Given the groveling of the greedy, it is not surprising that they are not the only ones having a difficult time grasping the moral of this sordid tale. Average taxpayers, who this year made quick work of the stimulus checks that were supposed to buy our way out of an economic slowdown, also seem to believe that there's plenty more where that came from and are prostrating themselves before Mr. Paulson's helping hand.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you. An inspiring message in difficult times.

More evidence of our emerging welfare state surfaced Thursday when I took a call from a woman from Lake Charles, La. Having caught wind that Congress has another stimulus plan in the works, she embarked on an Internet odyssey to determine when she should commence her mailbox vigil and hit upon a recent story I wrote mentioning Stimulus II.

"Do you have any updates?" she asked me.

She is not alone. In recent weeks, I have received five other calls or e-mails from readers wondering when they might expect their second check. Among them was Eugene, another Internet wayfarer who left a telephone number in the St. Louis area.

Referring to them as "readers" is being generous because they clearly didn't read the stories that prompted their calls. Maybe it's because they have become victims of the bipartisan heightening of bailout expectations.

My stories quoted economists who believe that a second stimulus package is needed as well as their speculation about what the proposal should contain. They discounted the possibility of a second check, noting the ephemeral benefits the first checks had on the economy. They said extending unemployment benefits or public works projects addressing pressing infrastructure needs would be more appropriate prescriptions for a second round of stimulation therapy.

As a practical matter, now that the election is over, members of Congress have little motivation to spread the wealth so blatantly. The issue of whether they get to keep their gilt-edged health-care plans has already been determined.

But that has not occurred to those awaiting their fair share of bailout benevolence. Some may find this renewed faith in government refreshing, as irrefutable proof we are not condemned to live in an age of diminishing expectations. This faith is not constrained by social, economic or political boundaries. It has become the catechism of the AIGs of the world as well as the unwashed masses.

Lord, help us, if that's the only silver lining to this dark cloud.

More than likely, we will not find our way to the Promised Land relying on an Old Testament Scripture citing the hazards of rewarding greedy or stupid behavior, either by the eight-digit income set adept at building houses of cards or homeowners who were too ignorant to read the provisions of their mortgages or who blindly believed that there would always be someone willing to pay more for their home than they did.

No, it's more likely we'll embrace bailouts as the lesser of two evils and cross our fingers that the rescued will exhibit the kind of model behavior many of them have shunned in the past. And we'll redeploy the bag of tricks bequeathed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: low interest rates. Ironic as it seems, sometimes a hair of the dog that bit you is the only way to treat a substance abuser.

But maybe we'll feel the smallest pang of remorse over our responsibility. And while, like an alcoholic, we will undoubtedly have to look to a power greater than ourselves for recovery, perhaps accepting a measure of blame will reduce the costs of welfare capitalism going forward.