On Wednesday, President Obama addressed the nation to talk about the deficit problem. Theannual deficit is the amount of money our government spends in a year that is not covered by the taxes we pay. That is opposed to the national debt, which is the accumulation of these deficits.

Currently, our deficit is $1.65 trillion. To put that in perspective, if one dollar equaled one second, it would take over 52,000 years to equal this year’s deficit. I don’t think my poor little calculator could do the math on our over $14 trillion of accumulated debt.

Obviously something needs to be done. We either need more money coming in, or less money going out. As pointed out on IowaHawk’s blog, not enough money realistically exists to cover our expenditures. Therefore, we must reduce our spending to balance the budget and begin to pay down our tremendous debt.

According to Reuters, 59% of Americans would cut programs to reduce deficit spending, while 30% would raise taxes to cover the cost. President Obama agreed in Wednesday’s speech that cutting some spending might be necessary … right before he slammed Republicans for trying to lead us to a fundamentally different America than the one he’s known.

Read the rest at The Stir

Last March, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly told the public that the Affordable Care Act needed to be passed before we could find out what was in it. The bill was soon passed and signed into law, and one year later, we are still peeling back the layers on the onion that is Obamacare.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) originally didn’t support President Obama’s health care initiative, but for a different reason than his Republicans counterparts. Where Republicans on the Hill voted against a massive intrusion of government into 1/6 of the economy, Rep. Weiner wasn’t fond of Obamacare because he didn’t believe it went far enough. The congressman sponsored an amendment to implement universal coverage – Medicare for all.

Read the rest at The Stir

I just filled up my gas tank and I didn’t want to cry — I actually did cry. At $4 per gallon, it cost me nearly a c-note to fill up my mid-size SUV. That’s not for the fancy high-octane stuff either; we’re talking regular unleaded.

We don’t have room in our budget to increase the amount of money we spend on gas, so this means we’ll be doing a lot less driving. Fewer trips to visit friends in neighboring cities, no running back to the store for that one thing we forgot, and definitely no drives through the countryside.

I’ve had to do a lot of economizing in the kitchen too, as the price of food has been going up and up. The First Lady likes to tout the benefits of organic rabbit food (which, by the way, children would rather throw away than eat), but she’s not the one trying to pay for it on a modest salary.

Organic farming is much more expensive than farming with pesticides. Without pesticides, there’s nothing to kill the hungry bugs in the fields, which means that actual people need to be employed to keep the produce from being chomped to the vine by the creepy-crawlers. Employing people to care for the plants in organic farms is much more expensive than hiring a crop-duster once or twice a season.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the cost of organic food, but all food that has climbed in recent months and years. In fact, food prices rose more last month than they have in 36 years.

Read the rest at The Stir

It’s official. People don’t like the new health care law. Half of the states are suing the Obama Administration to stop Obamacare. How many ways do we need to say it? Except for a few fringe leftists, nobody likes the bill that had to be made law before we could find out what was in it.

We decorated protest signs with magic markers, we went to rallies, we abandoned the mainstream media, we went to Washington, we elected a Republican in Massachusetts … We said, “No thank you,” to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and their bankrupting bill disguised as ‘health care reform.’

They rammed it down our throats anyway and told us we should be grateful. They insist that it reduces the deficit, and that repealing it would ‘cost’ taxpayers $230 billion over 10 years. I’m not sure how repealing a $940 billion spending bill adds to the debt, but then again, I’m still confused as to why I should pay someone else’s medical bills.

Read more at The Stir

The new congress has been installed, the Constitution has been read, and now it’s time to get to work. Let’s talk about money, honey, and specifically where it’s going to come from to fund all the spending that our government likes to do.

Funny thing about governments: They don’t make money. People make money by trading goods or services for a paycheck. (This is what is commonly referred to as a job. I know it’s hard to remember in thiseconomy.) The government takes some of that money from you and me in the form of taxes, and gives it to someone else for whatever reason.

Giving away money is super fun. Look! They like us, they really like us! Who doesn’t love to play Santa Claus, offering free health care to all? The government is not Santa, and there are no magical elves working in the ER. Every dollar the government gives away (to Social Security,education, Obamacare, welfare queens, crack monkeys) has to come from somewhere.

Read the rest at The Stir

The 112th Congress was sworn in on Wednesday, bringing a Republican majority to the House of Representatives and new Speaker John Boehner (say Bay-ner, not Boner). First item on the agenda: Repealing Obamacare.

Of course, that’s never going to happen in the next two years. Despite the health care law’s tendency to discriminate against women, children, and small businesses, the repeal will never pass through the Democrat-controlled Senate and certainly would never be signed by President Obama.

It doesn’t matter that 60% of Americans oppose Obamacare, or that states are repealing the law all on their own; the Democrats know what’s good for you, gosh darn it, and that’s to have a health care system asspectacular as Canada’s. And the Democrats wonder why they gotslaughtered at the polls in November.

Read the rest at The Stir

SEIU (Service Employees International Union) has spent millions of dollars getting Barack Obama and other Democrats elected. The famously left-wing labor union supported the presidential candidate that was going to pay Peggy Su’s mortgage and put gas in her car.

Unions are all about the little people.

One of Obama’s biggest campaign promises was for health care reform, specifically universal health care. It works so well in Canada, after all. SEIU openly supported Obama in the 2008 Presidential election.

Obama was elected, everyone partied (and left their litter behind), and everyone waited for change to come to America. In one of the few campaign promises that the President has actually kept, he signed into law a bill that would transform our health care system into a nationalizedone.

Be careful what you wish for. Since ObamaCare passed last March, small businesses have dropped health care coverage for their employees while big businesses got special exemptions, and drug relabeling has discriminated against women with cancer. Taxes have gone up, and will continue to do so.

Read the rest at The Stir

Are you ready for the biggest tax increase in United States history? Me neither. My only hope is that the still Democratic-majority Congress will vote to extend or even make permanent the so-called Bush tax cuts.

As it stands now, everyone’s taxes are set to go up January 1. The average American household making the average American income of $52,029 will see its federal taxes go up 10%, from $11,261 to $12,441.

That’s a lot of money to be forking over to the government so that Congressman John Conyer’s scalper son can have a sweet ride.

It seems that most of Congress wants to extend some of the tax cuts — specifically for those households making under $250,000 or individuals making under $200,000 annually.

This discriminates against high-income earners, who are already picking up more than their fair share. The top 1% of earners (those making more than $352,900) pay 28.1% of all federal taxes. Despite what Warren Buffet says about ‘doing his part’ for society, it’s not fair to foist your beliefs on other people.

Read the rest at The Stir

Nancy Pelosi managed to keep her seat representing San Francisco in the House of Representatives against challenger John Dennis in last week’s elections, but the Democrats’ new minority status in the same chamber has ousted her from her position as Speaker of the House. The Speaker is the top job in the House, and despite what Joe Biden says, is second in line for the Presidency.

After the election, Ms. Pelosi made clear her intention to retain her top dog status in the Democratic Party by seeking the post of House Minority Leader. John Boehner, who is now the supposed Speaker-elect (although nothing is carved in stone yet), currently fills the seat.

It turns out that Democrats in the House aren’t too keen on keeping Nancy Pelosi in a leadership position. They have drafted a letter to the soon-to-be-former Speaker, imploring her to step down.

The letter talks a great deal about Republican demonization of their great leader. Of course they love her — it’s just that those evil Republicans have “taken away [her] ability to lead.” The Democrats fear that the Republicans will continue to target Nancy Pelosi as the face of all that is wrong in Washington, and they respectfully ask her to step down.

The letter states:

This is a difficult letter to write, because we admire your commitment, your drive, and your conviction. You have been an historic figure in our great nation, and for that we are all proud, as should you be. Nonetheless, we each experienced how Republican demonization of you and your leadership contributed to our defeat.

The Republicans have demonized Nancy Pelosi? Hardly. She’s earned her 33% approval rating all on her own.

She has led the charge to pass billions and billions and billions of dollars in spending we can’t afford, so that twenty-somethings will be able to study art rather than grow up and get a job.

Nancy Pelosi pushed for the health care law, which Americans didn’t want, and has since been shown to discriminate against women, give breaks to big business, and drop coverage for children.

It was Nancy Pelosi, not Republicans that rammed through an $819 billion stimulus package that included funding for menopausal women to take yoga classes. Let’s also not forget about the stimulus-funded crack monkeys.

Nancy Pelosi was the one that accused the CIA of lying to her about interrogation techniques. She called opponents of anti-abortion health care un-American. She was the one that said bills could be bipartisan without bipartisan votes.

Nancy Pelosi might be the face of everything in Washington that’s wrong and corrupt and out-of-touch with Americans. But Republicans didn’t demonize her into that position. She got there all on her own.

Maybe the Democrats should stop blaming Republicans and own up to the fact that they made a mistake in making Nancy Pelosi their leader. They have no one to blame but themselves, and the fact that they blame Republicans is exactly why so many of them were voted out. Get a clue, Democrats, unless you want to see your numbers go down again in 2012.

Cross Posted at The Stir

Last week we learned that ObamaCare hurts small to medium businesses by offering special waivers to the big boys like McDonald’s. What good are rules if they keep changing?

It’s (relatively) easy to pass a law requiring all citizens to purchase health insurance. The difficulty lies in actually providing medical attention to everyone who needs it. Here’s a secret that Nancy Pelosi forgot to tell you: Health insurance does not equal health care.

Since the government can’t force anyone to be a doctor, nurse, or drug-developing scientist, there’s a finite number of health care providers. In a free market, people rise up to supply the demands of society. In an ObamaCare world, people don’t want to bedoctors anymore, because there’s just too much hassle and red tape involved with government-run health care.

Now we have fewer doctors and more people wanting cheap (or free!) medical attention. (Sidebar: When are accountants going to be mandated? Because I could sure use one of those to figure out my taxes.) Something has got to give; the question is what?

Apparently the answer is services and drugs specifically for women. Last year, the U.S. Preventative Task Force recommended a reduction in the number of mammograms women receive in their 40s and beyond.

Recently, the FDA has been playing around with rationing the use of Avastin for women with breast cancer. The cutting-edge drug has been proven to extend the lives of women suffering from advanced breast cancer. The drug could still be marketed to treat other cancers such colon and lung cancer. This move suggests that the FDA is keen on rationing women’s access to health care.

From Holly Pitt Young:

When the FDA takes something “off label,” it is actually rationing treatment. It essentially gives Medicare and most insurance companies permission and justification to deny coverage for the medication.

Government health care at work: Good-bye innovation, hello rationing.

Cross Posted at The Stir