Remember Bart Stupak? He was the “pro-life” House Democrat that caved to peer-pressure and voted for the health care bill along with ten of his cronies. The next day, the bill was signed into law by President Obama. But don’t worry, President Obama signed an executive order that would outlaw federally funded abortions. Except for the fact that that order isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Why would they cave, I wonder? What could be the cost of 11 votes that would tip the scale on the health care bill that has nothing to do with health care? Apparently it costs $3.4 billion.

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform legislation mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks — and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual or political payoffs.

Stupak’s office said there’s absolutely no link between the earmarks and the health care bill’s passage.

Sure. There’s absolutely no link between my happy hubby and my new pair of shoes either. Give and take. Making deals. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It’s part of being human. But we’re not playing with other people’s money. Democrats are.

Remember this chart?  It was from the 2008 Presidential campaign.  I can’t tell you how many Obama supporters calmly and patiently explained to me that I would be silly to vote for McCain over Obama because I would get a bigger tax cut under Obama.  And I calmly and patiently explained to them that by taxing top earners so significantly, they’d have to cut jobs at their companies.  I also pointed out that in order to fund all of Obama’s socialist pie-in-the-sky ideas, the money would have to come from somewhere, and that I was 100% certain that we’d see that $250k bar drop.

Within a couple of weeks of the inauguration, Obama raised taxes on the poorest people in our country, those who have the highest majority of smokers in their demographic. The cost increase on a pack of nicotine sticks was the highest in US history.

But lots of people don’t see that as a *real* tax, because smokers can choose to quit and probably should for their health.

But even those tobacco-taxes-aren’t-real-taxes people should be worried now.  In an interview out today, President Obama said:

The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table… So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.

What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table…Some would say we can’t look at entitlements. There are going to be some that say we can’t look at taxes, and pretty soon, you just can’t solve the problem.

The real problem has to do with the fact that there is a just a mismatch between the amount of money coming in and the amount of money going out. And that is going to require some big, tough choices that, so far, the political system has been unable to deal with.

I have a suggestion Mr. President.  How about we spend less money?  Why does Nancy Pelosi need $1000 per week for booze and delicacies on her private cross-country jet rides?  That’s $1000 per week for food and booze, mind you, not the cost of the travel itself. And I’m sure the turtles didn’t really need a $3,400,000 tunnel to cross the road.  What about the $800,000 for repaving a back-up runway at an unused airport?

President Obama, please don’t raise my taxes to fund those ridiculous projects.  I don’t know how much more of your “help” I can afford.