It's about time for level financial heads

Early this morning Mr. Obama held a conference to get to the bottom of the out-of-control government spending and told members of Congress, and the American people, that something has to change. Really? Isn't this some kind of revelation that should have been reached before a 1 trillion plus bill was shoved through Congress and just signed by the president? He also said that we would have to start making "the tough decisions" about where to spend our money and what areas would have to go without. I'm not sure which was the tough decision for Mr. Obama in this bill, whether to give $2.2 million to partisan community groups like ACORN, or spending on the mob museum in Nevada, or possibly buying new electric cars for Washington politicians? What did the American people have to give up to get these "needs," without which the US economy would fall apart? It's a good thing that Mr. Obama is on top of the unnecessary fiscal spending in government, otherwise how much money would we Americans actually be on the hook for? I'm just saddened that my children will still be paying for this monstrosity 20 years from now. And I thought we were supposed to make life better for our kids.

Change we can believe in?

Many months ago we were given promises of change coming to Washington, and most of the country fell in love with the idea. Even some conservative friends of mine, dismayed by the thought of McCain as our party's choice, were temporarily swayed by "Slick" Barry's silver tongue. Many weeks now into his new administration we have had some change, though not the changes we thought we were getting, especially with oversight of the Census Bureau moving to the highly partisan White House (thus leading to possible changes in district borders, which would drastically affect elections and funding) and the copious withdrawals of Cabinet appointees (although "Turbo Tax" Tim still made it in).

The change that we were promised, however, doesn't seem to have taken effect as of yet. There was abundant outcry of "fear-mongering" by President Bush in relation to the war on terror, yet now we see similar tactics by our current administration that the stimulus must be passed immediately to prevent total economic destruction. There was also considerable outrage about the "hidden actions" during the Bush years, yet the lavish promises of "transparency" by our current administration has brought us the most abundant spending bill in US history, put through Congress like a thief in the night with Senators and Representatives given scant few overnight hours to read and comprehend a thousand-page piece of legislation before being forced to vote by the empowered Democrats. Even Obama's pre-election commitment to complete bipartisanship was thrown by the wayside as the authorship and voting of the bill went nearly strictly down party lines, with even numerous Democrats voting against it.

It seems that the "change" Mr. Obama had been promising all along turned out to be something other than expected, and we the people are still left uncared for while the politicians bicker about things that have little to do with the rest of the country. One thing that hasn't changed about Washington, however, is that politicians will still tell you what you want to hear in order to get elected. I, for one, Mr. Obama, would like my money back because the change you're giving us just doesn't add up.

And the spending just keeps on coming...

With three kids ages 6 (almost 7), 4, and 2 (almost 3), we have quite a task every time we go to any store, as I'm sure many of you can relate to. My wife does the actual shopping, and I usually do the other work of stopping my kids from grabbing everything in sight and trying to explain that we can't buy something if we don't have the money. My son's answer to that is usually, "Then why don't we just go to the bank and take some out?" He knows about the bank, etc. since we went there a year or so ago to have him start an account to save for his mission. Then we start the round robin discussion about how if there's no money in the bank we can't take anything out, and that we have to have money to put in unless we have money in the first place, and so on and so forth. I'm sure you get the idea.

Well, this kind of thing is quite difficult to explain when they have such a wonderful example in our national government (thank goodness they don't see the news yet!). I can't even imagine what parents were telling their children 13 years ago when we all saw our president lying under oath about his relationship with the intern! Parents nowadays have a hard enough time teaching their children what is right without having our government and society mixing things up. This all leads me to our current situation.

I've been fuming about this recent bailout for some time now, and I haven't yet recovered from the last one. I have never believed that handing out money we don't have to people who don't really need it is a mistake. This makes particular nonsense when giving this money to failing companies in efforts to help them succeed, especially if we want to promote economic growth. I've been hearing a lot about what is actually contained in the current bailout, and as it would be, the president and Congress have included much that has nothing to do with improving our current economy. A new favorite website of mine of The Heritage Foundation, which gives no nonsense facts, has a new website, www.askheritage.org, that gives lots of facts about this bailout plan. Here are some of the highlights:

• $200 million for repairs to the National Mall in DC including $21 million on new sod
  
• $600 million on cars for government bureaucrats
• $650 million for digital television converters
• $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts
• $87 billion Medicaid bailout and increased SCHIP to help move the country to providing health insurance for every American -- code words for socialized health care!
• increased spending on family planning and birth control for children, immigrants and the wealthy -- this was subsequently removed by Pelosi when there was a widespread outcry against it
  

While some of this may be needed (and as well as some that are not necessary), a stimulus bill should do just that: stimulate the economy! Now I'm no economist, but I don't believe how any of the above can even remotely stimulate the economy into growth. I'm thankful for many of the members of Congress voting against the bill until it is improved and pared down to spending on improving the economy alone.

I'm just not sure what we tell our children and grandchildren when they are having to continue paying for this horrid mess years from now. Well, I'll get off my soapbox now and return you now to your regularly scheduled programming...