President Obama is sounding like a grating broken record—trust that his unprecedented plan to spend our way out of this recession while hampering successful businesses with increased cap-and-trade regulations, healthcare costs and taxes is going to work! The current European Union President, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, recently called Obama’s excessive stimulus spending a "road to hell." The Congressional Budget Office reports that the president’s rosy scenario of his budget cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term is more likely to produce a deficit that could expand over a trillion dollars a year through his term in office. America is in trouble.

Most politicians promise themselves into office, but few seem as committed to expanding the scope and cost of government as rapidly as our current leader. The fact that we are in one of the worst recessions in memory and unemployment numbers continue to grow just deepens the economic hole we are digging for ourselves!

Will our president and legislature discover the common sense and courage to start saying “NO” in time to save this country from bankruptcy? Unfortunately, far too many citizens and businesses are demanding more bailouts, more stimulus money and more pervasive entitlement programs.

Being a good politician ought to be more like being a good parent. When my son at sixteen asked if I was going to buy him a car, I replied with one word, “No.” When he said, “Everybody gets a car.” I answered, “I don’t think that’s true, but even if it was true, it will now be everybody minus one!”

Does a good parent give their children everything they want? Does a good parent keep paying the debt on their overdue credit cards? As a parent, I never expected at the time to be liked for saying “No.” We trusted that with time, we would be respected for the tough love and life lessons that we provided for our son.

The true test of a parent’s effectiveness is not continued dependence but the ability of their children to live and prosper on their own. The sooner teens learn that life doesn’t owe them the standard of living they want the sooner they realize that they’d better get busy earning it for themselves. Continued...