The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has just released its Small Business Economic Trends Report for this month, and small business optimism continues to decline. Probably not shocking news given the current economic climate and the rising unemployment rate. However, the NFIB’s analysis of the cause behind this serious downturn is worth noting.

NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg laid the blame for today’s jobless numbers squarely on the Obama Administration’s misguided regulations, proliferated by ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, and record breaking deficit spending of late. Explaining that the White House has failed to bring any relief to the negative trend, Dunkelberg said, “The failure to understand why small business owners are not hiring or investing has resulted in a set of policies that have not been very effective, and Main Street is suffering.  The icing on the cake: the growing debt, large deficits, threats of higher taxes, regulations being spewed out by state and local administrations, and the uncertainty of the new health care law—is it any wonder that optimism is down?”

Today’s 9.1% unemployment rate is well above the 6.7% rate Democrats promised by now if their stimulus plan passed.  The stimulus failed, the President’s takeover of healthcare and the private sector has caused economic ruin, and our climbing debt and deficit has destroyed jobs and is now threatening America’s future. The data reflected in NFIB report may not be surprising, but it needs to be taken seriously. The canaries are starting to grow quiet.

U.S. debt held by the public is projected to reach $10.9 trillion by the end of this year – or approximately 72% of GDP. Not since World War II has this nation seen a debt-to-GDP ratio this high and, due to misguided public policy decisions, unemployment remains high and economic drivers stagnant. Note, too, that approximately 47% of our public debt is held by foreigners. We are no longer approaching a crisis, the crisis is here. As an illustration, membership to the European Union requires that a nation’s debt not exceed 60% of GDP.  Much has been made of the collapse of Greece and looming bankruptcy of other European countries, and rightfully so. However, given the warning signs coming from across the Atlantic, it seems worth noting that we couldn’t even qualify for EU membership.

Another year, another trillion dollars in debt…or so it appears this Congress goes. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just released a FY2010 analysis pegging the federal budget deficit for the past year at $1.291 trillion. According to the CBO report, federal spending in 2010 accounted for 23.6% of the entire economy. If you know your American history, you’ll know that adding that 23.6% to last year’s 25.4% records the highest spending levels in our nation’s history, with the exception of World War II.

Review the CBO report here.

If we do not quickly reverse the current course of frenzied overspending and pass spending cuts across the board, our debt will soon carry this nation over the cliff. This report is a clear indication of the self inflicted threat we now face. The last two fiscal years have marked record shattering deficit spending in Washington by a majority in Congress that increased spending rates to unsustainable levels. Worse, if acted upon, the President’s budget proposal would only serve to double our national debt. If we continue to spend at current levels, we will leave future generations with permanent trillion dollar deficits.

The federal government’s fiscal year ends this Thursday, and instead of considering legislation to reduce and restrain spending, Congress is scrambling to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to most likely extend the current levels of bloated, out-of-control, federal spending. This is the epitome of tone deaf leadership. In the last two weeks, the House has found a way to add $5 billion in new spending, and yet, we cannot get as much as a debate on spending cuts or limits.

Congress will not find answers to America’s fiscal crisis until leadership in both houses commit to reducing spending across the board and capping all future spending at levels that render a balanced budget. I recently came across an article (“How to Grow Out of the Deficit”) in the Wall Street Journal by Edward Lazear, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, in which he argues that if we reduce federal spending to inflation minus 1%, we could reach a balanced budget in less than a decade. He writes:

Americans don’t have to choose between an enormous deficit or high taxes. If we returned to the relative fiscal restraint that prevailed during the Clinton and Bush years, when spending was 19.7% and 19.6% of GDP, respectively, we could avoid the entire mess.

An interesting idea. In fact, very similar to an amendment to the U.S. Constitution I've proposed in past years to cap all federal spending at 20% GDP. But, these aren’t the only ideas out there.  We should be discussing any and all strategies to responsibly rein in and prioritize government spending. Congress must begin to take this issue seriously, and do so quickly.

Many of you know, I am a member of the Joint Economic Committee, a bicameral committee in Congress. Recently, the Republican staff released a chart detailing the organization of America’s new health care system based only on the law. And it isn’t pretty.

Click here to take a look at the enormous and confusing monstrosity of bureaucracy, new taxes, and government roadblocks that will soon stand between you and the quality of timely care you and your family need. This is the result of a federal government takeover of health care and the reality of what the president’s “health care reform” actually means.

If you study the chart, you will get a snapshot of what will amount to more than 159 new federal programs, commissions, and boards, somehow all reporting to CMS, relieving you of the burden of making those pesky personal choices about your own health and medical care. By the way, when you look at this chart, you are only seeing a third of the entire new government health care nightmare to come.

Here are a couple of highlights from the committee’s report:

- $569 billion in higher taxes
- $529 billion in cuts to Medicare
- 16 million added to the ranks of Medicaid
- 17 major insurance mandates
- the creation of two new bureaucracies with powers to impose future rationing: the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the Independent Payments Advisory Board

Senator Sam Brownback summed it up best: “This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn’t take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy.”

On January 1, 2011, Democrats will knowingly institute a $3.8 trillion tax increase on American taxpayers and small businesses. In this economy, tax increases like this will only serve to stifle the creation of American jobs because of its punitive effect on small businesses.

Here it is by the numbers: 

Until the Democrats' planned tax increase

When you woke up on June 30, you may not have realized that you were waking up to a historic day. However, this was not a day that marked American achievement, innovation, or recovery. It was a morning that witnessed a $166 billion single day increase in American debt. That would be the third largest deficit hike in American history and, shockingly, we reached this extraordinary mark in just two years of wanton, unchecked spending initiated by President Obama and carried by this Congress.

Click here to ready the Washington Times report on the debt increase.

To give you some perspective on what this means: A $166 billion increase in debt, spent in just one day, is bigger than the entire deficit of the 2007 federal budget. Your share of this increase, on average, totals at approximately $1,500 in new debt. By the way, the other two largest single day spending increases occurred under President Obama’s direction, and there is no sign of this trend slowing down. Over the last two years, the federal government has accrued a $2 trillion deficit.

It’s fairly obvious, but there is no way we can sustain this kind of spending

I have been in elected office for 10 years now. And of those 10 years, I have spent half of that time in the California State Legislature and the other half here in Congress. During that time, I have found that a common thread exists amongst elected Democrats. At least part of the reason they ran for and are in office now is to raise taxes on somebody or everybody and then spend that money on people and programs which they deem worthy. A fundamental tenet of the Democratic Party today is that government should tax more and spend more on lots of things.

But that ideology has just run headlong into political reality. Polling shows that one of the top two issues on the minds of Americans these days is the debt and the deficit. The other big issue is jobs and the economy. And Americans realize that the two are related. They understand that our crushing debt burden, up 81% since Democrats took over Congress in 2006, is one of the drags on the economy. So, spending money that increases the deficit and the debt even further is not very popular right now. And of course, there is an election in just over 4 months.

So, if you want to spend new money without earning the rancor of the public, you need to either cut other spending by an equivalent amount or raise taxes by an equivalent amount. Raising taxes is never popular. But it’s particularly unpopular after you've just raised them by trillions of dollars in a very public and unpopular health care bill.  And because of the ideology described above, cutting other spending is very difficult within the Democratic Caucus because there are constituencies for every dollar currently being spent, and those constituencies don’t want to see it reduced. So, Democrats can’t agree to do it.

Hence the Democrat’s dilemma.  They want to spend more money on lots of things. They think that the only way to create jobs is to have the government spend more in order to create more government jobs. But they don’t want to vote for more deficit spending. They don’t want to cut any other spending. And, although they would like to raise taxes, they fear the ire of the voters in November if they do. That’s why they won’t pass a budget in the House this year for the first time since 1974. They want to spend the money, but they don’t want to vote to spend the money.

This is resulting in a form of gridlock here in D.C. as Democrats struggle to marshal the votes amongst Democrats for more spending programs knowing that no Republican will support any of this. Heretofore, Speaker Pelosi has always gotten her way. But it is getting more difficult as the debt rises and the elections loom. Just this week, Majority Leader Hoyer (D-MD) announced that Democrats may not be able to adhere to President Obama’s pledge to not raise taxes on families earning below $250,000. Although, it should be noted that this pledge has already been broken on several occasions, it was nonetheless quite interesting to see him admit that there are more taxes to come which will impact everyone. This is a clear signal that given the choice between no new spending, or cutting existing spending to pay for new programs, the Democrats are likely to choose neither and instead add on more and more tax increases or deficit spending or both.

They can’t help themselves. It’s why they came to Congress. But it’s the wrong thing at the wrong time. We can create jobs and lift the economy by cutting taxes and cutting spending and giving the private sector some certainty that if they take risks and succeed they will be rewarded and not punished. But this majority will never go there.

So, we will all be better off for the time being if all these tax and spend ideas just die.

Would it surprise you to learn that as of right now job losses have returned to their pre-recession levels? Would it also surprise you to know that, in the 2001 recession, employers cut 3.1 million more jobs than have been lost at the same point in the current recession?  Both are true and the question I’m sure most of you have right now, is ‘how is that possible with unemployment numbers still so high and potentially rising?’ The answer lies in what the current administration and Congress are not doing this time around.

A report recently published by the Heritage Foundation makes the very point which my colleagues and I in the House Republican Conference have been repeatedly stressing to the current majority: Congress has a very real role and responsibility to this nation’s economic recovery by means of passing legislation that sets the tone for job creation.

Speaker Pelosi and Democrats on Capitol Hill believe that more government spending is the answer to fix rampant job loss and a shrinking economy. Since the economic collapse,  bill after bill has been passed into law all of which do nothing more than grow the federal government; this is the true meaning of each new commission established, and new spending programs for ‘stimulus’.  By masquerading as ‘stimulus’ these bills are working to not only edge out the private sector, and put them at a competitive disadvantage, but it is also replacing entrepreneurs with bureaucrats.  It’s no surprise that unemployment numbers remain high.  The history of economics has taught us that deficit spending, especially in order to expand the federal government, has never worked and it certainly will not work in this recession

Instead, Congress should be focusing on legislation which encourages investors to come off the sidelines and entrepreneurs to revitalize small businesses.  There was an opportunity to provide these kinds of simulative measures (Like a nation-wide wifi infrastructure) in the so-called ‘stimulus’ bill, but Democrats remained singularly focused on taking advantage of the situation.

Recovery will take hold, but we must change the direction of this Congress and enact policies which significantly reduce the federal government’s takeover of the private sector. 

Rescinding proposed tax hikes found in a number of bills this year and cutting government spending across the board are two great ways to start.

The spending lobby, the mainstream media, recipients of taxpayer largess, and virtually all elected Democrats would have you believe that we have already cut spending to the bone and that there is no more to be done and the economy and people will suffer if we cut any more, so you we must pay a bunch more in taxes to prevent this calamity.

Baloney! Rubbish! No Way, Dude!

Don't believe them. Governments at all levels are loaded with fat, waste, abuse,  overpaid employees, and unnecessary programs. Here is a taste of the literally dozens of spending cut proposals that exist in Congress in one form or another. Some of these are relatively small dollars (only in government is $1 million "small") and others are much bigger. This is not an exhaustive list by any means. I present it only to give you a flavor of what is possible.

The cuts below total $16 billion worth of savings, and this doesn't even include the major reform of the entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) where the really really big, long-term dollars are.  

Eliminate “Community Development” Programs:  This proposal would eliminate all programs under the Community Development Fund at an annual savings of $4.45 billion.

Eliminate Essential Air Service (EAS) Program:   This proposal would eliminate spending for the EAS program, at an estimated annual savings of $150 million.

Eliminate the International Trade Administration:  This proposal would eliminate the International Trade Administration at an estimated annual savings of $447 million. 

Eliminate the Technology Innovation Program (TIP):  This proposal would eliminate the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) at an annual savings of $70 million. 

Eliminate the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program:  This proposal would eliminate the program at an annual savings of $125 million. 

Eliminate Trade and Development Agency:  This proposal would eliminate funding for the Trade and Development Agency at an annual savings of $55 million.

Eliminate the New Starts Transit Program:  This proposal would eliminate the New Starts Transit Program at a savings of $2 billion annually. 

Exchange Programs for Alaska, Natives Native Hawaiians, and Their Historical Trading Partners in Massachusetts:  This proposal would eliminate the program at a savings of $9 million annually. 

Eliminate Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants:  This proposal would eliminate Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants at a savings of $2.5 billion annually. 

Eliminate Amtrak Subsidies:  This proposal would eliminate subsidies to Amtrak at a savings of $1.565 billion annually. 

Eliminate Title X Family Planning:  This proposal would eliminate Title X Family Planning at an annual savings of $318 million. 

Appalachian Regional Commission:  This proposal would eliminate this program, saving taxpayers $76 million annually. 

Eliminate the Economic Development Administration (EDA):  This proposal would eliminate spending for the EDA at an estimated annual savings of $293 million.

Eliminate Subsidy to Corporation for Public Broadcasting:  This proposal would eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting at an annual savings of $445 million. 

Eliminate National Endowment for Arts (NEA) Subsidy:  This proposal would eliminate this taxpayer subsidy at an annual savings of $167.5 million.

Eliminate National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Subsidy:  This proposal would eliminate this taxpayer subsidy at an annual savings of $167.5 million.

Eliminate Funding for National and Community Service Act:  This proposal would eliminate federal funding for this purpose at an annual savings of $1.15 billion. 

Eliminate the Energy Star Program:  This proposal would eliminate the Energy Star Program at a savings of $52.5 million annually.  

Eliminate International Fund for Ireland:  This proposal would eliminate taxpayer funding for this program at a savings of $17 million annually. 

Eliminate U.S. Agency for International Development:  This option would eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, saving taxpayers $1.39 billion annually. 

Eliminate Economic Assistance to Egypt:  This option would eliminate Economic Support Fund aid to Egypt (Foreign Military Financing Program assistance would continue), saving taxpayers $250 million annually.

Eliminate Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority:  This proposal calls for eliminating this special subsidy to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority at a savings of $150 million annually.

Yesterday, the House Budget Committee bestowed yet another one of the coveted “Budget Boondoggle Awards” on the Obama Administration and, as I suppose there won’t be any acceptance speeches made at the White House, I thought I’d share the news with you. 

But, it isn’t the fact that the administration won yet another Budget Boondoggle Award that surprises me.  Examples of President Obama’s waste of tax dollars abound.  What really surprises me, is the subject of the award which is truly stunning: 

A proposed new “Office of Livable Communities” which would cost $20 million in taxpayer dollars and is part of the administration’s proposed $527 million increase for “livable communities” initiative.

So…what exactly is a “livable community”?

Good question. The House Budget Committee asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to define “livability” and he responded that it, “...Means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or post office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get into your car.”

Again…what? Why is the federal government spending tax dollars for what ought to be left up to state and local levels of government. And, while we are at it, do we really need another new bureaucracy in the Department of Transportation set up for the sole purpose of imposing utopian neighborhood planning approved by the agenda du jour in Washington? The short answer is No.

Spending tax money on a program as ridiculous as this almost should make it unnecessary to mention that this new spending is being proposed at time when we are facing a $1.5 trillion deficit, when we are $13 trillion in debt, and when we should be adding more private sector jobs rather than more government jobs.

To learn more about the Budget Boondoggle Award: http://house.gov/budget_republicans/hbcboondoggleaward.shtml

To learn more about House Budget Republicans’ efforts to cut spending now: http://house.gov/budget_republicans/press/cutspendingnow.pdf

To learn more about House Republican Whip Eric Cantor’s effort to combat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress: http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/

To speak out for yourself on the need to keep spending in check: http://www.americaspeakingout.com/

Last week, I mentioned that over my next few blogs, I would provide some short observations on the state of things here in Washington, D.C…and here is a group of several additional observations. Enjoy!

For decades, the assumption has been that government employees were paid less than their private sector counterparts. But the tradeoff was that the public sector jobs were more secure and often times, you can't be fired without gross malfeasance. That has since changed. Big time. The American Enterprise Institute, just completed a study which showed that the average government employee now makes significantly more than their private sector counterparts when pensions, generous vacations, and other benefits are taken into account. Equivalent workers in the private sector only make half that much! This is on the heels of another study which showed that government employees now earn about 25% more than private sector workers in straight salary without taking benefits into account. And of course, the whole issue of it being harder to get fired in government is still true. So, if you work in the private sector and run into a friend who works for the government, ask them why you need to pay more taxes and sacrifice so that they can get paid double what you make?

I like golf, although I'm not very good at it. But I haven't played in almost 3 years because I just don't have the time. The first President Bush was widely criticized by the press for playing golf while soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were fighting in the Gulf War. Accordingly, George W. Bush stopped playing golf after 9/11. President Obama has no such compunction. According to London's Daily Telegraph, Obama played 32 rounds of golf in his first 15 months in office, about the same as Bush 43 played in his entire 8 years in office. American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where is the press outrage?

As you undoubtedly know, I think that the Socialized Medicine Bill passed earlier this year is a disaster for the country on several levels. But what you may not know is that it is universally acknowledged that there are a number of elements in the bill that just don't work or create consequences that even supporters of the bill never intended. But rather than fix them, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), decreed that no hearings would be held this year on the Health Care Bill because it might give the impression that the just passed bill has problems. Now, we wouldn't want to give that sort of impression would we.....especially since it's TRUE!

Socialized Medicine Bill factoid you probably don't know: You used to have to have income below a certain amount and a net worth below a certain amount to qualify for free health care under Medicaid. Not anymore. The wealth cap has been completely removed. So, if you have little income, you can live in a $2 million house that you own free and clear and still get all your health care for free.

Another Socialized Medicine Factoid you probably don't know: In order to give the illusion that this bill somehow reduces the deficit, Democrats needed revenue sources. One of the ones that is now law is a requirement that every business create a 1099 for anyone (business or individual) who buys more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year. and send a copy to the recipient and the IRS. This is supposedly going to raise $17 billion in new money as companies who are not reporting income now will have to report it. But, what will be the costs to the private sector to generate these documents for every check they write? Another huge job killer here.

The Democrat majority in Congress may not be able to produce a budget, but the Republican Study Committee has. That budget reduces the deficit every year and creates surpluses by 2019. Oh...and it actually lowers taxes by making the 2001/2003 tax cuts permanent and by permanently keeping the alternative minimum tax at its present level. You can read more about it on the RSC’s website by clicking here: FY 2011 RSC Budget Plan

Did you hear about the SEC employees who were caught watching internet porn on their government computers almost 8 hours a day while at work during the financial crisis? OK, watching porn on a government computer is bad enough, but what bothers me the most is that some of these guys were making $200,000 a year and spending 8 hours a day NOT WORKING and did it for a long time while the SEC was telling Congress that they didn't have enough money or people to do the job. Unbelievable.

Over my next few posts, in no particular order, will be a bunch of miscellaneous facts or observations from yours truly on various aspects of the state of things in Washington, D.C. today. Unlike some of my ramblings, these will all be short. I'm not sure that this is accurate to say, since this stuff emanates from the seat of the nation's enormously bloated government, but I'll say it anyway - Enjoy!

Apparently, Congress will not take up or pass a budget this year. The Budget Act requiring an annual budget was passed in 1974. The House has never failed to produce and pass a budget since then...until this year. The person responsible for producing that budget, Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) famously remarked in 2006 "if you can't budget, you can't govern." I guess the Democrat majority can't govern. Can you say dysfunctional?

The so-called Financial Reform Bill has now passed both the House and the Senate. But the versions are quite different from one another, so a conference committee is currently resolving those multiple differences and it will have to pass both chambers again in order to get to the President, who has called for it to be on his desk by July 4th. We need financial reform. I do not want to go through what happened in September/October of 2008 again. But yet again, this bill is another partisan travesty. It will not fix the problem. It will make consumer loans, which are already hard to get, even more expensive and even harder to get, which will further reduce jobs. The President will say exactly the opposite of what I just did. But then he also said that the health care bill would lower the deficit and cut costs in health care. (heavy sigh)

Some of the biggest contributors to the financial collapse in 2009 were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Both are now owned by the government. The Financial Reform Bill doesn't even address them.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal first asked President Obama for the federal help to protect the coast from the oil spill on May 10th. It has arrived only just recently.

Our Republican Conference has set up a website with a cool new technology to gather input from Americans everywhere on what the agenda of Congress should be right now instead of the job-killing, deficit-creating, unstable track we are on right now. You can visit it at www.americaspeakingout.com. Go there and weigh in on your thoughts about what we should really be doing and where we should be going. You can also share your thoughts on my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/johncampbell.

Greek Tragedy: There has been much publicity as of late, particularly among the financial community, about the fiscal problems in Greece. The Greek government has spent far more money than it has taken in and done it for enough years that they now have a huge deficit and an even bigger debt. There are fears that Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland could be next. Stock markets around the world lurched downward out of fear that these systemic debts and deficits may not be able to be repaid and that these countries may need to default on their debt.

But they are not alone. Here are the current year deficits (2010) and outstanding national debt as a percentage of that country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Greece, the largest European countries and the U.S.:

Country	Deficit as % of GDP						Public Debt as % of GDP
United States	10.3%						90.9%
Greece	9.4%						130.1%
Spain	11.5%						67.4%
Italy	5.3%						119.6%
United Kingdom	12.8%						78.1%
Germany	5.6%						77.1%
France	8.4%						84.4%

As you can see, our deficit this year is actually larger than Greece's, although the accumulated debt is lower. But our accumulated debt is greater than that of any other country on the list except Greece and Italy (As a percentage of GDP). And our annual deficit and debt is greater than both Germany and France. In other words, our fiscal situation is far worse than the average in the Euro zone.

So, why then has the dollar been rising in the last few weeks and the interest rate on our debt dropping even as Greece approached default? In the past, when countries spent too much and got into debt problems, they often printed money like crazy and inflated their way out of the debt by paying it down with much cheaper "dollars" than they had borrowed. This works, but it does so by inflating away the wealth of their nation in what is a very uneven and inequitable way. Several South American countries did this in the 1980s. But Greece does not have that option because they do not control their own currency. They cannot unilaterally inflate the Euro, and the rest of Europe won't do it for one of their member's problems. That is why they are in such trouble. If they can't inflate it away, the only other option (other than cut spending which we will get to in a minute) is to default on the debt and not pay it all back. That's what had the markets really freaked out.

But the US and UK each have their own currencies and can inflate that currency if they want to. So, there is no panic yet on US bonds. And, because the US bond market is so huge and so liquid, that it has a "lesser of evils" appeal to it.

But that appeal won't last forever. On the path laid out by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi, we will be at Greek levels of debt and deficit in just a few years. Eventually (I fear sooner rather than later), markets will begin to worry about the safety of US debt and a crisis will ensue that will be very very severe. We will either have to create inflation to pay the debt or be crushed by it.

We have got to dramatically cut federal spending everywhere, and soon. Otherwise, everyone in this country will pay a large price for inaction. I watched the government employee union members out in front of their parliament protesting any reductions in their pay or pensions. Sound familiar? Countries all over the world are in fiscal trouble because of the growing entitlement mentality, where people feel they are entitled to a whole bunch of stuff that somebody else is supposed to pay for. They don't care who pays, as long as it's not them. Free health care; retirement at 50 with your highest salary for the rest of your life; government administrative employees who earn the same as doctors but with no risk or accountability; free money for all kinds of things; waste and fraud in every department. We can't afford it anymore. And everyone's standard of living and opportunities will fall in order to maintain some free or unjustified stuff for a few if we don't act soon.

The good news is that the public gets it, and this sentiment is starting to creep into Washington. Two incumbents: one Republican and one Democrat were defeated in primaries in the last week apparently because both liked to earmark and spend money. The Democratic leadership pulled an $85.6 billion spending bill from the floor last night when a Republican amendment passed to reduce what had been a 31% increase in spending down to 0%. It appears the Democratic leadership pulled the bill because they want to try to find a way to get their spending increase back.

But can you believe that in the current environment we would be increasing spending on ANYTHING by 31%!!!  Even if you believe that the solution to all of this is to raise taxes (which it isn't), you would have to raise everyone's taxes at every level by more than 60% to pay for that AND the debt.

Last month, the federal deficit was $82.7 billion for the MONTH.  That is the highest monthly deficit ever. That was an annual deficit not that long ago.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi, is this the change we can believe in? They don't get it, or they don't care. But you do.

If you want to have a little fun and help us send a message about cutting spending go to the website for the latest project, which we are calling YouCut. On the site, you can vote on one of 5 proposals to reduce spending. The winning proposal will be brought to the floor for a vote under the only procedural option available to the minority party to do so, and we will be doing this for the next several weeks. These are small amounts that will not solve the problem right away. But Washington is overrun every day with people asking for money for this program and that project and a salary increase and a cost of living increase (When I was first elected, 90% of every meeting that people requested to have with me was someone asking for an earmark or some form of federal money for their company, agency, project, or program. Now because of my earmark stand, it's down to about 50%, but that is still way too high.)  We need to start to balance out those spending voices with the voices of the vast majority of Americans who want us to stop squandering their future. This is a way to start to change that culture of spending. Please log on and help us by clicking here.

Today, President Obama convened the first meeting of his ‘Fiscal Commission.’  The commission, according to the White House’s website is tasked with “…identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.”

It’s worth noting that when President Obama took office on January 20, 2009 the national debt had hit the $10 trillion mark. After only a year, the most recent figures available indicate that debt totals have risen to almost $13 trillion. President Obama and this Democratic Congress have increased the national debt by over $2 trillion dollars, making our deficit crisis substantially worse. 

And now the President is attempting to generate fanfare for his fiscal responsibility credentials? 

Some of you regular Greeneyeshade readers may remember an exchange I had with OMB Director Peter Orzag regarding the budget that the President submitted to Congress.  After reading that budget, it became quite clear to me that it was simply a fantasy based on rosy assumptions and overly optimistic economic metrics, and that the President had no viable solution to reduce the debt and deficit, he was…at a loss.

Mr. President, if you want to control the debt, you must start by controlling spending in the near term, the medium term, and the long term.  Simply forming commissions to talk about the problem won’t help either.  This problem won’t fix itself and tough decisions must be made by Congress and the White House…the time to act is now. 

The sheer amount of spending that has gone on in this town for the preponderance of this year and the last is simply staggering.  Whether it was the stimulus bill at the beginning of 2009 or the health care bill at the beginning of 2010, and everything in between, most Americans understand that the spending levels are simply out of control…and are continuing in ways that are both big and small.  But I assure you, even the instances that receive less media attention, they are every bit as egregious.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a press conference of the Capitol Hill Press Corps to announce the installation of new light fixtures in one of the House cafeterias.  Nothing major to report here right?  Well these new light fixtures will cost the taxpayer $140,000.  That’s $140,000 for light fixtures in ONE room in a single House cafeteria.

I will let you draw your own conclusions about the lighting needs of the Capitol, but at a time when we have debt and deficits as far as the eye can see…do we really need a $140,000 lighting system for a cafeteria?

I am sure most of you loyal readers of this missive do not need a reminder, but yesterday was April 15, and you know what that means…Tax Day.  If you think your taxes are bad now…you need to take a look at the lists below. 

Tax Increases Enacted since January 2009

This list, totaling more than $670 billion in tax increases includes the Health Care Bill, SCHIP, the Stimulus Package, and several other pieces of legislation which have been signed into law by President Obama.

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Quote of the day: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." – Theodore Roosevelt, April 23rd, 1910

Now what?: Unless you have been hiding somewhere for the last 24 hours, you know that ObamaCare passed late last night. So now what?

First of all, lawsuits are already being filed by states and others challenging the constitutionality of various provisions in the bill.  The provision attracting the most attention is the one requiring that you buy health insurance approved by the government or face a fine and/or imprisonment.  You may ask if this is not similar to the state requirements that people buy car insurance. Those car insurance laws have been ruled constitutional because you don’t have to buy it unless you want to drive your car on a public road. It is essentially a cost for the “privilege” of driving on a public road. If you only use private roads, you do not need to buy insurance. But this health insurance provision requires everyone to buy simply because you take breath.  As an aside, notice how effective the car insurance mandates have been. We all still have to pay for uninsured motorist coverage because so many people still drive without insurance. Imagine how difficult and intrusive it is going to be in order to enforce this health insurance mandate.  And, by the way, there is no cost or funding in the bill for that enforcement, which is supposed to be done by the IRS.

Secondly, the provisions of the bill, both taxes and benefits, will all phase in between 6 months after enactment and 2018. So, there is still time to stop it. I, along with virtually, if not all Republicans, are already calling for repeal. As a practical matter, even if the public were to entrust us with the majority in Congress this November, it is unlikely that President Obama would sign a repeal of his signature piece of legislation. So, unless that veto could be overridden with a 2/3rds majority in both Houses, the bill cannot be repealed before 2013. However, one of the tricks employed by Democrats in order to give the illusion that this thing is fiscally responsible is that they did not fund any of the agencies, enforcement, and implementation of the bill. For example, the massive federal health exchange, where most of us will have to get coverage eventually, has no funding for any employees. A Republican controlled Congress could block implementation of the bill by simply not funding this and many other provisions in the bill, thereby providing leverage to replace it with something else.

Unfortunately, there is no way to stop the taxes, fees, and penalties outside of outright repeal. The tax increases begin next year and are fully phased in by 1/1/2013.

So what will Congress do for the rest of the year? Not good things, I fear. Obama, fresh off his victory of last night, is already talking about a partisan regulatory reform bill which will be a disaster for anyone who wants to borrow money, and an amnesty bill for illegal aliens. That amnesty bill will likely make illegal aliens eligible for free health care.

Unbelievable, and stunningly out of touch.

I must confess that I was pretty despondent last night. These last 2 weeks have been long and emotional. I am running on little sleep and lots of fear for the future right now. But I have to pick myself up and go back in the arena and fight again. And I will. And you all will too. This crowd in charge here is doing all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. But America gets it.

We can change the direction of this country. We must change the direction of this country. With all of you pulling together, we will change the direction of this country.

Quote of the Day: “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” - Thomas Jefferson

The Vote: As of now, it looks like the final vote on $1 trillion in new taxes, $2 trillion in new spending, socialized medicine, and the confiscation of much of your freedom will be voted on at about 10:00 PM Eastern time tonight. I don’t know what is going to happen. I fear they will win. I pray they will not.

In an astounding show of arrogance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a posse of her fellow Democrats chose to walk right through the group of people still protesting against the bill and for their civil and constitutional rights. They could have taken the tunnels under the Capitol, they clearly did this on purpose. She did this while holding a giant over-sized Speaker’s gavel in a gesture intended to taunt the assembled multitude. I’m not sure it is possible to overestimate the arrogance of this ruling majority. Their sense of omnipotence and their dismissal of the Constitution, the will of the people, the facts, and all pretense of equity makes me so angry that my hands are shaking as I write this. If you don’t believe me, here is the video:

Click Here to View Video in Full

Just to show that the Democrats are still spending your money, socializing all of American society, and still cutting special deals for their friends, here’s another tidbit for you. As part of the Health care bill, Democrats included a provision having nothing to do with health care. Under the bill, no student loans will be permitted except as a loan from the government. They will eliminate all private lenders from the student loan program. This, by the way, completes the 4 year quest by Democrats to totally socialize all student loans. That is exactly what they will do with Healthcare now and very likely the banks in the future. Oh………but there is one exception: The bank of North Dakota, you can't make this stuff up. Only one privately owned bank in the country will be permitted to make student loans in the future if this passes, and that is the Bank of North Dakota. The entire state of North Dakota, by the way, is represented by a Democrat, Earl Pomeroy. Coincidence?

This is what the future under Obama/Pelosi/Reid rule looks like. Government controls more and more of your life; you have less and less freedom, and you get to keep less and less of your money. But if you are a friend of one of our rulers, you may get a special deal. Then, you can do what no one else can, you may not have to pay the taxes everyone else does and generally live under a different set of laws than the rest of us. Wasn’t the American Revolution about stopping that very practice?

I pray Congress does the right thing tonight and kills this bill. If we don’t, I pray for all of us.

“So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of Americans, I ask for your support.” – President Richard Nixon, November 3, 1969

However, this time, I think that the majority of Americans who in every poll oppose this health care travesty are not and will not be silent. I thank you for that. And remember, there is strong bipartisan opposition to this bill. The partisan side is the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party who are driving this thing and will not work together with the rest of us who want to go in a direction which will not hasten our economic failure. The word is that Speaker Pelosi still has not persuaded enough Democrats to vote for the bill against their constituents and in many cases against their own beliefs.

Tax Increases: The “final” bill came out yesterday afternoon. Here is a partial list of the tax increases included in this reprehensible and immoral bill.

- A new 3.6% tax on all investment income including capital gains. That means that the capital gains tax rate (including California state tax) will rise to 33.9%. The tax on dividend income will rise from 15% today to 53.7% including California tax. 

- Additional Medicare tax on self employment income and wages.  This removes the current cap on wages subject to this tax and it will effectively move the top income tax rate from 35% to 43.4% within a couple of years. Add in the California tax again and would then be close to a 54% marginal tax rate.  I believe that this is the highest of any major industrialized country. But because spending is so high we would still have $1 trillion dollar annual deficits even after this tax.

- There is a 2.9% tax on all medical “devices”, which basically means everything used in a doctor’s office or hospital. Including gowns, syringes, and the like.  This will increase health care costs for everyone who does not get free government insurance.

- The deduction for Medical expenses is currently limited to those expenses that exceed 7.5% or your income. This will be raised to a threshold of 10% of your income. This means that fewer people will get any tax relief from medical expenses they pay for themselves.

- There are various taxes on anything a person might do to pay for their own medical expenses. Things like Health Savings Accounts, Cafeteria Plans, and Flexible Savings Accounts are ways for people to save their OWN money for their OWN medical care on a pre-tax basis will be limited and taxed. This is all part of the way that President Obama gets to government run health care by making it illegal or costly to pay for your own care so you have to go to the government.

- A 10% tax on tanning services. I call this the “Jersey Shore tax”. This one has to be really upsetting to ‘The Situation’, Snookie, and Pauly D.

- A tax on self-insured health plans. This is another penalty on those who try to pay for their own health care.

- A new tax on pharmaceutical manufacturers. This will raise the price of drugs for everyone who does not get them from the government for free.

- A new tax on “Cadillac” health plans. This is an up to 55% tax on any health insurance that costs over about $800 per month including employee and employer contributions. This tax does not apply if you are a union member or your plan is from AARP or Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. These are major Democratic constituencies and they exempted them. For everyone else, this discourages comprehensive health coverage. Isn’t that what the President says he is trying to achieve? Like most of what the President says, his actions are not even close to his words.

- There is a new tax on all 'for-profit' health insurance companies (except for a few favored ones).  This will also raise the costs of premiums for everyone not getting free care from the government.

- If you don’t buy health insurance (as dictated acceptable by a new federal czar), you will be fined up to 2.5% of your income even if you pay all of your medical expenses yourself. If your company does not provide said health insurance to all employees, the company will be fined up to $2,000 per employee.

All of this will cause growth and jobs to decline, medical costs to go up, deficits and debt to increase, and quality doctors and providers to leave the business. It will cause fewer people to pay for their own care, and more to seek government care. And that is exactly what the authors want.

In spite of all of these taxes, this bill will create deficits of at least half a trillion dollars MORE than what we already have at the federal and state levels over the next 10 years, and a great deal more after that. So, lots more taxes, lots more spending, and lots more deficits.  The time at which the Treasury will not be able to sell debt any more, except at a huge rate, is approaching fast. America, in my opinion with this bill, is much more likely to collapse under the weight of our own fiscal excess than to be seriously threatened by any external force.