pattygreen

No. I have a problem with the government enforcing yet another regulation. Will there be no end?

I am against corporate welfare as well, so I don't know why you bring it up here. That's probably the only thing we agree on.

no, I didn't get money. I didn't cut the foster care program because children can not help themselves if left orphaned or neglected. Also, Foster care is not a 'federal' program. It is run by the states. But I did recieve WIC when my kids were young, and energy assistance, and I was once on welfare for 2 years or so when I was 19. I was one who took advantage of these programs simply because I could. It was a huge waste of federal funds.

You would love to live in a Utopia where everything you ever wanted or needed would be provided for you by someone else. Where all are equal and have the same number of apples as you do. This would satisfy you? Life is not a bowl of cherries. But it can be if you 'work' towards bettering your situation. (you know, that 'pursuit" of happiness clause.) Oh yeah, that's a bad word for you liberals, isn't it? "work"

The Entitlement Society 01/13/10 08:51:04 am, by Tony Quain Left and Wrong author: Michael Lind Left and Wrong article: The Case for Economic Rights Salon columnist Michael Lind thinks he’s put together something special with the attached article. To punctuate his hubris, he even begins his words with “Three score and six years ago, the greatest president of the 20th century … ” as if to excite the reader that what they are about to absorb is something on par with a great speech that many had to memorize in grade school. Lind cites Roosevelt’s fourth inaugural address in which the 32nd president calls for a “Second Bill of Rights", prescribing a society where many economic wants and needs are provided by the state. Lind indicates that many of the rights mentioned are now delivered by the government and many more deserve to be so. This vision is (supposedly) one of “economic citizenship": … there would be a single, universal, integrated, lifelong system of economic security including single-payer healthcare, Social Security, unemployment payments and family leave paid for by a single contributory payroll tax (which could be made progressive in various ways or reduced by combination with other revenue streams). But this is not all! In another part of the article, Lind refers to “the right to a good education", “the right of every family to a decent home", “the right to a useful and remunerative job", and “the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation” (ha ha, yes you read that right). Once it is accepted that one economic provision is an inviolable right of citizenship, the generosity of the progressive knows no bounds. If a “good education” and a “decent home” and a “useful job” and “adequate recreation” are to be provided to me by the state, why not a “wonderful retirement", a “comfortable car", a “meaningful leisure life", and “satisfying sexual encounters"? If an individual must not earn everything for himself, why must he earn anything? Lind’s limited list is a beginning, not an end. He contrasts this with what he calls “welfare corporatism", where private industry sells regulated, subsidized versions of these “necessities” as “commodities” to an unwary public. This especially is where Lind detaches from reality. The following paragraph is indicative: In the utopia of welfare corporatism, today’s public benefits – Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and, in a few states, public family leave programs – would be abolished and replaced by harebrained schemes dreamed up by libertarian ideologues at corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Tax subsidies would be funneled to insurance companies, brokers and banks. Social Security would be replaced by a bewildering miscellany of tax-favored personal savings accounts. Medicare would be replaced by a dog’s breakfast of tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance and personal medical savings accounts. Unemployment insurance would give way to yet another Rube Goldberg scheme of tax-favored unemployment insurance accounts. As for family leave – well, if you’re not wealthy enough to pay out of pocket for a nanny for your child or a nurse for your parent, you’re out of luck. First of all, Lind himself is a Policy Director at a think tank (The New America Foundation), also coporate-funded in part. How is anything that CATO or Heritage produces any more ideological or harebrained than what he has produced in this article? He could just as easily have said, “in the utopia of economic citizenship, your rights—life, liberty, and property—would be abolished and replaced by harebrained schemes dreamed up by socialist ideologues like myself at corporate-funded think tanks like the New America Foundation.” Progressives are so often blind to their own hypocrisy. Second, libertarians don’t believe in “tax subsidies” or “tax-favored” treatment. Insurance companies, brokers, and banks all benefit from tax deductions that liberals and progressives protect. Income tax exemption of savings, for retirement, health, or anything else, is consistent with taxing consumption instead of work. And “bewildering miscellany” and “Rube Goldberg scheme” more correctly identify the hundreds of government programs and byzantine tax structures that attempt to provide the economic citizenship Lind proposes. He then makes the ridiculous claim that “[e]conomic citizenship is more efficient and cheaper in the long run, because the government need only meet costs, while subsidized private providers must make a profit.” This bit of nonsense keeps popping up on the left among those who try to sway the economically illiterate or those who are economically illiterate. The main overriding reason why government is far less efficient than private industry is this: government takes financial responsibility and incentives away from the consumer, thereby destroying all reason for producers to be efficient and price competitive. In fact, that’s the whole reason why none of these so-called economic citizenship programs work. They all cover an area of individual responsibility, where decisions are made on a personal level, and then make 300 million people responsible for them. When a decision is made about cost, the individual does not care; when a decision is made about quality, the individual has no say. Also, for the record, profits are not a cost and are returned to society, incentivizing investors to find and support those providers who are more efficient. It seems that Lind is really arguing over the means (state vs. private) to a supposedly undisputed end (economic equality and welfare). At one bizarre point, he even speaks of the “libertarian myth of market competition in the provision of social insurance", as if libertarians agree with social insurance. Yet I believe that he and his kind have largely lost the battle of means (government now attempts to use free market methods where possible). And the real battle is whether these economic “necessities” and insurance should be socially provided by government at all. There is a reason why FDR’s fourth inaugural is not ‘ranked with Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech’, why American’s have not heard of a “Second Bill of Rights", and why a man who did much to work against Roosevelt’s legacy consistently polls higher than he as “the greatest president": what FDR proposed is economically inefficient, anathema to liberty, and morally repugnant. And while I see that Mr. Lind waited until the anniversary of FDR’s speech to unveil this well-written but sickening essay, there is perhaps no time since that speech was given and ideals expressed that Americans are in greater denial of their merit and awareness of their guile.

Here's a list of programs I wrote the words cut next to the ones that should be eliminated. Medicaid $118,067 AFDC 24,923 Food Stamps 24,918 Supplemental Security Income 22,774 Lower income housing asst. 12,307 cut Earned Income Tax Credit 9,553 cut Veterans medical care 7,838 Stafford loans 5,683 cut Social Services (Title 20) 5,419 cut Pell Grants 5,374 cut Low-rent public housing 5,008 cut General medical assistance 4,850 Foster Care 4,170 School Lunch 3,895 cut Pensions for needy veterans 3,667 General Assistance 3,340 cut Head Start 2,753 definitely cut Food supplements, Women, infants and children 2,600 cut Training for disadvantaged youth and adults 1,744 cut Low-income energy assistance 1,594 lower eligibility requirements Rural housing loans 1,468 cut Indian Health Services 1,431 cut Summer youth employment 1,183 cut Maternal and child health 1,059 cut JOBS and WIN 1,010 cut Job Corps 955 cut Child care block grant 825 School Breakfast 782 Child care for AFDC 755 Nutrition Program for Elderly 659 Housing interest reduction 652 Child and adult care food program 624 "At risk" child care 604 Over the past sixty years, America has turned into a welfare or “entitlement” state. Government now takes up to 50 percent of our income in taxes to pay for entitlement programs and regulations. Middle-class taxpayers have become beasts of burden; we pay for handouts, subsidies and entitlements to an endless list of special-interest groups who demand the money we earn. These special interest groups include not only the classic “welfare” recipients, but far worse, corporations and millions of average middle-class Americans. We have corporate tax breaks, big farmer subsidies, college tuition grants, Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, rent subsidies, “free” public schools, government-employee pensions, and free healthy care for millions of illegal aliens. Hundreds of special-interest groups, large and small, now feed at the public trough. All these entitlement programs have one thing in common; someone has to pay for them! That someone is you, the hardworking, middle-class taxpayer. The Welfare-Entitlement State requires legal theft on a massive scale because government confiscates our money through taxes to pay for these handouts, subsidies and entitlements. How do liberals, Democrats, and too many Republicans justify this legalized theft? They tell you it is your moral duty to “help” others, whether you like it or not. That means you have no right to your paycheck or your profits while others are in “need”. If you refuse this alleged moral duty, they call you cruel and mean-spirited. Most of us are not dumb enough to voluntarily hand over 50 percent of our income to bureaucrats. So liberals and Republicans alike use goverment to foce this moral “duty” down our throats. Our elected representatives, our agents, put their hands into our pockets at the point of a legislative gun, and turn compassion into compulsion. The author Joel Turtel asks, “by what right?” Why do we let our elected officials turn us into beasts of burden? Should government force us to “help” strangers at the expense of ourselves and our family? Does government have the arbitrary right to take 50 percent of everything we earn? What is the purpose of government? Is it supposed to protect our rights, property, and hard-earned paycheck, or is government our lord and master? Turtel explores these vital issues. He also attacks the one vicious idea that’s used to justify the Welfare-Entitlement State…that government has the right to force us to be our brothers keeper, whether we like it or not. He shows how this ideas spawned the Welfare-Entitlement State that now devours us with taxes, regulations, huge deficits and skyrocketing health care costs. Lastly, the author shows us a way out. He proposes a startling new Amendment to the Constitution that would end the Welfare-Entitlement State, once and for all. This amendment would permanently restrict government power and forbid local and state governments and Congress from stealing our hard-earned money and violating our liberty. The Amendment would end most regulations, abolish the income tax, and phase out all entitlement programs. It would give us a bright new future.

You just don't get how important it is that the government doesn't continue to have more and more control over everything. Do you want to end up like other Nations with dictators?

That article on gov. waste I found online. Pick any waste # and click on the link and it will bring you to its source. # 19 says that the gov. owns 50,000 vacant homes. This info is reported from USA today.

You're a very nasty person. Do people in your real life like you? I wonder if you have any friends.

Wonder what you would find if you frisked President Obama’s enormous socialized health-care reform bill? Answer: Another anti-growth mandate! Go figure! More hidden negatives involving President Obama’s health-care reform bill have surfaced. This is all starting to make sense now, because – according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) – we had to pass the bill to . Unfortunately, she might actually be right…The Associated Press reports: A requirement tucked into the nation’s massive health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore. More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-throughs. The new law, which applies to any restaurant with 20 or more locations, directs the Food and Drug Administration to create a new national standard for menu labeling, superseding a growing number of state and city laws. President Barack Obama was expected to sign the health care legislation Tuesday. The idea is to make sure that customers process the calorie information as they are ordering. Many restaurants currently post nutritional information in a hallway, on a hamburger wrapper or on their Web site. The new law will make calories immediately available for most items. “The nutrition information is right on the menu or menu board next to the name of the menu item, rather than in a pamphlet or in tiny print on a poster, so that consumers can see it when they are making ordering decisions,” says Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who wrote the provision. Talk about anti-business growth! Unfortunately restaurants aren’t the only thing getting attacked with the help of this Obama-Care mandate: Vending machines are also fair game: The law will also apply to foods sold in vending machines, specifically those that do not have visible calorie listings on the front of the package. Granted, knowing the exact number of calories in every single little item is not always a bad thing, but this is just ridiculous. I am pretty confidant that I can pick out the right food for myself, whether it’s healthy or loaded with everything that’s terrible for you. Also, think of the negative economic impact this ‘mandate’ will have on thousands of small businesses across the country! Yes, the huge food chains – such as McDonalds and Applebees – will likely survive this petty mandate, but what about the food chains with just over 20 locations? Or how about the food chains with just under 20 locations, but plan on expanding their business in the near future? Those are the businesses that might not be able to fork up the extra money to have their entire menu tested at a lab, menus redesigned, and new drive-through boards installed outside. Unfortunately, we will probably be waving goodbye to quite a few jobs for teenagers and young adults. Thank you President Obama, FDA, and other large government expansions for reassuring me that a McDonalds’ Big Mac hamburger is still not good for my health. I appreciate the heads up… I really do

Pork Report, March 2, 2010: Beer Museum Edition by The Pork Report Spending Under the Influence: National Brewery Museum receives a $449,574 grant from the Federal Highway Administration The Secretary of Transportation says “it’s fun playing Santa Claus to states and cities around the nation” …as the Department of Transportation furloughs federal bridge and road inspectors Washington politicians and bureaucrats enjoy ‘lavish’ government pensions; Federal employees can draw on their pension beginning at age 50 and can get as much as 80 percent of their final salary National Institutes of Health spends $3.9 million to develop ‘Avatar’ sex-ed video game for kids National Science Foundation pays to produce a “free” CD for road trips on a highway in California Director of Louisiana housing agency charged taxpayers for personal expenses; Unallowable charges included a $150 bill at hair salon, items from a sporting goods store and Wal-Mart, and telephone and electric bills BAILOUT WATCH: Fannie Mae seeking a $15.3 billion bailout 78 percent of Americans say government spending is out of control and 59 percent of U.S. citizens do not trust the federal government

Archive for March 22nd, 2010 This article states my point better than I could say it myself. Feds/Progressives Take Over Student Loan Program Posted by Steve Markowitz on March 22, 2010 In recent weeks the Country’s attention has been focused on the government’s attempted takeover of America’s healthcare system. This focus masks the larger challenge as Progressives have been implementing a broader plan to transform America into a European style socialist system. The evidence is convincing. Progressives started their assault on capitalism with a soft sell approach. Realizing that America would never outwardly accept socialism, for decades they nibbled at the edges as they succeeded in adding a handout program here and there and then expanding coverage for these seemingly benign programs. The purported goals for these programs was humanitarian; to help the less fortunate. As a wealthy country, how could we not help our fellow citizens? But there were more insidious goals behind these seemingly separate governmental programs: to make more people dependent on the government. The Progressives understood that you own (and they vote for) people who offer the handouts. What started as programs for the “needy” slowly became more mainstream. We would give subsidizes to farmers and other industries we deemed “important”. Then we would add programs for more middle-class Americans. With each new program we would also need a growing group of workers dependent on government “industries” for distributing funds and services, another beholding group. The Progressives would let this growing industry organize so that these labor unions would support the Progressive politicians who in turn would let the unions grow and collect more dues. With the popping of the housing bubble and the economy’s rapid downward spiral, the Progressives in the federal government got the opportunity of a lifetime. In the chaos that followed, they bailout large corporations making them wards of the state. Bailout General Motors and they must do the government’s bidding. Bailout banks and the government “owns’ them. Bailout states and the federal government could control their spending too. The healthcare industry, one-sixth of our economy, caused a hiccup in the Progressives march. This industry didn’t need a bailout making governmental control problematic. No problem: the Progressive-in-Chief, Barack Obama, created a crisis by telling Americans we all need a bailout (saving) being offered by the just passed healthcare overall bill. While it wasn’t easy sell, the backroom deals are leading us down the planned path. Starting to see a pattern here? Just coincidence? But wait, they aren’t finished yet. While not given much air time, there are surprises in the healthcare bill. Take for example the government’s takeover of the student loan program. CNN Newsroom’s Kyra Phillips reported that weaved into the bill is language that would require all federal student loans to originate with the government. According to Phillips, “The measure also reaches beyond health care to education. Another one of President Obama’s top priorities – it will offer new help to needy college students”. Phillips went on to report that the change will save the government money in the future by eliminating the middleman. Sure Mr. Phillips, every program the government creates is initially touted as a money saver. But it never happens! And by the way Mr. Phillips, the government employees who now make more than their private industry counterparts are not middlemen? Really! I wonder if you also believe in the tooth fairy? OK, so you ask: What does the student loan program have to do with healthcare reform? Absolutely nothing. However, it does fit in nicely with the Progressives’ desire to socialize our economy and have the government manage all aspects of it. When this President said just prior to his election that we were: “Five Days Away from Fundamentally Transforming America “ he meant it. Now many who voted for the Progressive-in-Chief are having buyer’s remorse. They expressed this in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia and the senatorial election in Massachusetts. But Washington isn’t listening. Oh yes, that’s another thing about Progressives, they know better than that.

The government doesn't know how to spend money wisely and be a good steward of what the people give them, therefore, when they come up with a bill that they say isn't going to cost us anything, and in fact will lower the deficit, we say "yeah, right!" Their past record shows they are full of it. And when people, like liberals out there who support what the government does, encourage even more wasteful spending, you have to wonder where their coming from.

1. The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008. 2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security. 3. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties. 4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them–costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually–fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve. 5. The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts. 6. Examples from multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs. 7. Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job. 8. A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece. 9. Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. 10. The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. 11. The Pentagon recently spent $998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida. 12. Over half of all farm subsidies go to commercial farms, which report average household incomes of $200,000. 13. Health care fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually. 14. A GAO audit found that 95 Pentagon weapons systems suffered from a combined $295 billion in cost overruns. 15. The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs taxpayers $146 million annually in flight upgrades. 16. Washington will spend $126 million in 2009 to enhance the Kennedy family legacy in Massachusetts. Additionally, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) diverted $20 million from the 2010 defense budget to subsidize a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute. 17. Federal investigators have launched more than 20 criminal fraud investigations related to the TARP financial bailout. 18. Despite trillion-dollar deficits, last year’s 10,160 earmarks included $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California; $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; and $75,000 for the Totally Teen Zone in Albany, Georgia. 19. The federal government owns more than 50,000 vacant homes. 20. The Federal Communications Commission spent $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland. 21. Members of Congress have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars supplying their offices with popcorn machines, plasma televisions, DVD equipment, ionic air fresheners, camcorders, and signature machines–plus $24,730 leasing a Lexus, $1,434 on a digital camera, and $84,000 on personalized calendars. 22. More than $13 billion in Iraq aid has been classified as wasted or stolen. Another $7.8 billion cannot be accounted for. 23. Fraud related to Hurricane Katrina spending is estimated to top $2 billion. In addition, debit cards provided to hurricane victims were used to pay for Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and at least one sex change operation. 24. Auditors discovered that 900,000 of the 2.5 million recipients of emergency Katrina assistance provided false names, addresses, or Social Security numbers or submitted multiple applications. 25. Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737. 26. The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flight for direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY)–but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget. 27. Washington has spent $3 billion re-sanding beaches–even as this new sand washes back into the ocean. 28. A Department of Agriculture report concedes that much of the $2.5 billion in “stimulus” funding for broadband Internet will be wasted. 29. The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable. 30. Washington spends $60,000 per hour shooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks. 31. Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 on admission to entertainment events, $48,250 on gambling, $69,300 on cruises, and $73,950 on exotic dance clubs and prostitutes. 32. Members of Congress are set to pay themselves $90 million to increase their franked mailings for the 2010 election year. 33. Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billion annually. 34. Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece. 35. The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 million in additional federal funds. 36. Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards–subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want. 37. Congress appropriated $20 million for “commemoration of success” celebrations related to Iraq and Afghanistan. 38. Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230 for a beer brewing kit. 39. Two drafting errors in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act resulted in a $2 billion taxpayer cost. 40. North Ridgeville, Ohio, received $800,000 in “stimulus” funds for a project that its mayor described as “a long way from the top priority.” 41. The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 million per month to rent a lab that it cannot use. 42. Congress recently spent $2.4 billion on 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use. 43. Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers–the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans. 44. Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients. 45. Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse. 46. Washington recently spent $1.8 million to help build a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia. 47. The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies. 48. Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education. 49. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land. 50. The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 computers since 2001, many containing Americans’ personal data

I've said this a hundred times, yet you are soooo thick, that you either forget I said it or refuse to believe me when I say it. I am not against SOME government help for those who need it. I am against TOO many free giveaways at the expense of the hard working class, and I'm against government big time wastefulness, and their intrusion more and more into our lives. Are you deaf? SOME government help for those who really need it is acceptable. When the 'help' turns into entitlements and dependency and when it bankrupts the country, it's enough, and time to stop the squandering of our funds. Maybe you can get this about how I feel now after the quadrillionth time stating this. IT'S GETTING TOO MUCH NOW. WE ARE IN A RECESSION, WITH UNEMPLOYMENT AT STAGGERING HIGHS. WE CAN'T AFFORD TO 'HELP' EVERYONE NOW. THIS COUNTRY IS BANKRUPT. YOU CAN'T JUST KEEP PRINTING MONEY AND HOPE EVERYTHING WILL WORK ITSELF OUT!!!

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I know you think it's the governments job to feed you, house you, and keep you disease free, (most liberals have that need for security) but the majority of us like to be independent and take care of ourselves. Protection from the enemy is something that we can't take care of ourselves. Thus the need for the government.

If the federal government didn't have to financially support the peope who live here in every way possible, they would have enough money to do their REAL job, which is to protect and defend us.

The growth wasn't robust enough to lower the unemployment rate, which was unchanged at 9.7%. Those jobs will disappear beginning in the third quarter as the Census is completed. An estimated 3 million workers quit searching for jobs altogether during the downturn. The current 9.7% unemployment figure is, at best, misleading. It only counts a portion of the unemployed – those still receiving benefits. If you include discouraged workers, part-time or temporary workers who are underemployed, and a number of other unemployed segments of the population, the true percentage of jobless Americans is closer to 20-22%.

1/3 are government temporary jobs and 1/3 or so are Census hires that are temporary. They end in a month or so, then we're right back to unemployment. The only jobs that count are private secter permanent jobs.

You would just like to tell those terrorists, "okay now, be nice. We'll be friends with you if you're friends with us.":rolleyes: We must defend ourselves from enemies, or they will overtake us. War is never nice, but it is needed. The gov. is supposed to be there to protect us.

When I said "no more borrowing." I meant the government. Not the people. WE can do what we want with our money.

As you can see, He's a big fat deciever and liar!!!!!!!!!!!!

To liberals, actually pointing out when they're lying through their teeth is considered to be dirty politics and, in the case of the Obama Administration, perhaps racist, too. Still, despite the risk of infuriating Barack Obama's dwindling number of supporters, someone needs to point out that he may already be able to challenge Bill Clinton for the title of the biggest liar ever to occupy the White House. Of course, since I'm a partisan conservative, I don't expect everyone to just take my word for it. So, what I'm going to do is show you some quotations so that you can make your own decision about whether the Obama Administration has been truthful or not. Just read through these quotes, which only represent a small portion of the ones I could have selected, and ask yourself if the American people can take our President at his word. 1) "One year from now, we have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race - and I've won. I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House." -- Barack Obama, November 3, 2007 "President Obama promised during his campaign that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House." So far, though, at least a dozen former lobbyists have found top jobs in his administration, according to an analysis done by Republican sources and corroborated by Politico." -- Politico, January 29, 2009 2) "If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime - not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, nothing," Obama said last week. "Because the last thing we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle class." -- CNN, November 3, 2008 "One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday. The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000. This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich." -- Breitbart, April 1, 2009 "Wavering on an emphatic promise he made in the spring, top White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers would not rule out middle-class tax increases Sunday as a way for the Obama administration to pay for a sweeping health care plan. The statement, which was echoed by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner on Sunday's talk shows, pries open a door to the kinds of broad tax increases that Mr. Obama opposed in his campaign and that he and his advisers have ruled out since taking office in January." -- Washington Times, August 3, 2009 3) "As Justice Louis Brandeis once said, sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. The more people know about how federal laws, rules and regulations are made, and who's making them, the less likely it is that critical decisions will be hijacked by lobbyists and special interests. I think the current administration knows that, too, which is why it's been the most defiantly secretive government in modern times. It's time to change that. When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it." -- Barack Obama, June 22, 2007 During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it. ...When he took office in January, his team added that in posting nonemergency bills, it would “allow the public to review and comment” before Mr. Obama signed them. Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two. -- New York Times, June 22, 2009 4) "During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said several times that he intended to negotiate health care reform publicly. In fact, he said, he'd televise the negotiations on C-SPAN, with all the parties sitting at a big table. That way, Americans would be more engaged in the process and insist on real change. "That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process," Obama said at a debate in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2008." - "The notion of televising negotiations behind a health care revamp was so central to Obama's campaign promises of change and openness, however, that it became part of his stump speech as he traveled the country in 2007 and 2008. He'd describe how televised deliberations would take place around a big table, with seats filled by doctors, nurses, insurers and other interested parties. As president, he'd joke, he'd get the biggest chair. "Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN," Obama explained in a Democratic debate in Los Angeles in January 2008, in language similar to many of his campaign stops. However, the two biggest deals so far — industry agreements to cut drug and hospital costs — were reached in secret." -- McClatchy, July 9, 2010 5) "President Barack Obama Saturday proposed an additional $313 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other programs to pay for health care reforms expected to cost about $1 trillion over the next decade. ...About $110 billion of the new cuts would come from reducing scheduled increases in Medicare payments. That would encourage health care providers to increase productivity, White House budget director Peter Orszag told reporters. ...Altogether, the Obama administration is now asking Congress to trim spending on Medicare and Medicaid by more than $600 billion over the next decade, which is more than some Democrats are willing to swallow." -- CNN, June 13, 2009 "Let me also address I think a misperception that’s been out there that somehow there is any discussion on Capitol Hill about reducing Medicare benefits. Nobody is talking about reducing Medicare benefits. Medicare benefits are there because people contributed into a system. It works. We don’t want to change it." -- , July 28, 2009 6) "That's why we submitted the robust budget we submitted. And, of course, we also came forward with what we're going to talk about today, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an initial big jolt to give the economy a real head start." -- Joe Biden, June 2, 2009 "The care with which we are carrying out the provisions of the Recovery Act has led some people to ask whether we are moving too slowly. But the act was intended to provide steady support for our economy over an extended period — not a jolt that would last only a few months." -- Joe Biden, July 26, 2009 7) By a vote of 244-188 Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed an $819 billion bill aimed at stimulating the economy and tempering a spate of layoffs across the country. Says President Obama, the bill's lobbyist-in-chief: "Most of the money we're investing as part of this plan will get out the door immediately and go directly to job-creation, generating or saving 3 to 4 million new jobs." -- Forbes, January 28, 2009 In Saturday’s address, Obama also responds to critics who believe the $787 billion bill is not sufficient to turn around the economy and who are, therefore, pushing for another stimulus package. “[A]s I made clear at the time it was passed, the Recovery Act was not designed to work in four months – it was designed to work over two years." -- CNN, July 11, 2009