If the government worked the way it was designed to work, we wouldn't be paying for things we don't support. People with power and money have influenced the government for their own interests outside of what the people actually want. In a perfect world, elected politicians would actually support the will of their constituents. Unfortunately we've allowed special interests to control policy. The answer is to elect people who've taken a solid stand against special interest influence, who've pledged not to take corporate bribes, and who've promised to represent the American people.
Sort of.
However, if the "will of the constituents" intervenes into the life of a peaceful individual to the extent it robs the peaceful individual of self determination, then the politician becomes just a leader of a gang. Which is clearly where things are these days.
A thing wrong to do, doesn't become right by the number of people who advocate it being done. So Democracy doesn't trump individual rights and it shouldn't. Bernie doesn't understand or respect that. He's not alone though. since not many politicians do.
Government, at least the American government, from the beginning was
supposed to protect individual rights, not abuse individual rights if enough people agreed to doing it.
The bill of rights was a nice thought, but it's just about dead now...some people predicted that a long time ago...