The government isn't imposing hard times ... unless you count artifically depressing healthcare prices, confiscatory tax policies, overbearing regulation, and unwarranted and unwanted intrusion into personal lives. Hard times are imposed by the cycle of business boom and bust; and hard is relative.
The government created this problem by growing beyond resonable bounds. I argue that government created the problem by ignoring the inevitability of the bust part of the cycle and building in spending that was guaranteed to outstrip revenue.
That's fair.
I was trying to say that a society can tolerate only so much of hard times. A government which wants to survive will try not to let it get too close to the limit.