Listen carefully folks. While you’re drowning on CHANGE (and this you
can believe in), and you hope someone comes to the rescue, you better pray it’s your audiologist and your old English teacher. You’ve got to parse every word you hear from our government officials or you won’t know where you’ve sprung a leak in your savings, your future, and your children’s future. Remember that
this “mandate” we keep hearing of came about with a 52% win of the popular vote. That number doesn’t become a synonym for landslide!
This monumental budget President Obama introduced will help him keep his campaign promises by plunging us into inconceivable debt. This budget was ready to present last summer (with Obama’s co-sponsored earmarks; see
http://a-big-bang.blogspot.com/2009/02/obama-removes-his-name-from-pork-barrel.html ), but Nancy Pelosi held it up waiting for the new administration.
The result of all this spending will be that the middle class, which really came into existence after the Second World War, will be destroyed by tax increases. Maybe income taxes will rise “slightly” (depending on your definition of the word “slightly”), but we will be taxed in other ways—energy usage, loss of deductions for mortgage insurance, charitable donations, etc. The net result will be higher costs for everything!
I’m not surprised about the charitable donation change. When the numbers came out during the election, I was shocked to learn that
I donated a higher percentage of my income than Barak Obama—and to a wider range of charities. Joe Biden’s charitable contributions were at best negligible. How telling. These are people who eschew personal responsibility toward others. They are not their brother’s keepers. They want government to take the responsibility. Scary. They’ll decide to whom we should be charitable.
Chuck Schumer says the American people “don’t care” about earmarks—those little bits of personal vote-buying tidbits officials bring home and hand out to thankful donors. It’s a perverted pay it forward: government to representative, representative to businessman, etc.
I can’t totally blame Democrats for the 9,000 pieces of pork, earmarks, special projects or whatever the name of choice is these days.
The Democrats account for 60% of the barrel. The Republicans get 40%. So much for principle. But I listened to the President’s campaign speech when he said he was going to get rid of earmarks. I watched the President’s budget speech. I heard him say there were no earmarks in this budget, and I watched Pelosi, sitting behind him, break into that stiff botox-driven grin. They really do think we’re stupid. And some of us obviously are!
Those non-existent pieces of pork will cost us $410 billion. That's a lot of something for nothing! LOL I guess that number is considered inconsequential these days when our President pooh-poohs things that cost trillions. But the dollar I don’t contribute to the government is the dollar I get to keep, and $410 billion in a country with a population somewhat over 300 million means I get to hold on to some dollars for which I worked. I like that idea!
Too bad my holding on to MY money doesn’t seem important to President Obama.There is still some integrity in Congress. There are some Congressmen and Senators who do not take pork. This year all were Republican except for four Democrats who stood up to the broken campaign promise.
The people with anti-pork barrel integrity are (and not in any particular order):
Flake, Boehner, Cantor, Campbell, Nunes, Westmorland, Kline, McCoud, Jones, Hensarling, McHenry, Foxx, Burton, Price Shadegg, Ryan Pitts, Jenkins, Lance, Pence, Chaffetz, Cooper, Waxman, Hunter, Rooney, McClintock, Coffman, DeMint, Coburn, Feingold, McCaskell, Burr, and McCain. That’s all, folks.
Kudos to these representatives.
Go online and email them. Thank them for their integrity. Maybe if they know we know of and appreciate the right thing….
Know, too, that Rep. Jeff Flake (R. AZ) attempted to introduce a measure to have the House Ethics Committee investigate the relationship between earmarks and contributions. His measure was tabled—in other words, killed. All but two Republicans and 17 Democrats voted for the measure.
Terrible, huh? But what did you expect?
