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Marie Lozito	May  14, 2011 Marie Lozito is a Registered Nurse, Licensed Massage Therapist, wife, mother, grandmother and life-long conservative. She wrote a text on medical massage and taught at New York College of Health Professions.  Interested in, and observing politics since 1960, she ran for elected office in 2010.

Time for a guessing game. Do you know who made the following statement just a few years ago?

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is "trillion" with a "T." That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.

 Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America.

 And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.

 Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities."

Think hard.... I'll give you a hint: it was said in the Senate and is part of the Congressional Record.

Give up? It was [at that time] the new senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama. Yes! The very same person who is now demanding that we raise the debt ceiling. There are very few things this man says that I agree with but this speech from only a few years ago is one of them. Incidentally, the debt increased more than he predicted over this time period. It is currently over $14 trillion and rising at the rate of $188 million AN HOUR!

The Federal Government's discretionary spending has grown 79 percent faster than inflation since 2000. Over that period, anti-poverty programs increased 89 percent faster than inflation, education 219 percent, veterans spending 107 percent, and Medicare 81 percent. Also over that time period, the federal government has created two new health care entitlements (both unfunded), launched three wars (all unfunded), bailed out multiple industries (unconstitutional acts), passed a massive stimulus bill (bad economic thinking), enacted bloated farm, energy, and transportation bills (unwise and discriminatory), and, last year alone, approved over 9,000 earmarks (legal vote buying). "Simply put," writes Brian Reidl of Heritage Foundation, "all parts of government are growing." It seems like government appears to be the only thing "growing" in the country other than debt.

You couldn't make this stuff up: In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify. His proposal was rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, as Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, "passage of such a requirement would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it."

Right Senator Dodd! That's the idea! We, the taxpayers, are stuck for hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgages precisely because people who couldn't afford homes got mortgages. The CRA and other laws passed by the Democrats in Congress forced banks to make these bad loans and established Fannie and Freddie to give a false sense of security to the financial chicanery of the liberal/progressive politicians. Leftists have always found it easy to be compassionate with other people's money, pat themselves on the back for it, and then recoil in horror if anyone suggests it's not really compassion. After all, their intentions were good, so what if it didn't work out that way, so what if they are responsible for crashing the economy and indebting our children and grandchildren?

Federal agencies reported making $125 billion in improper payments in 2010, 94% of which came from social spending programs. The $125 billion was spread across 70 different programs in 20 federal agencies. The bulk of the problem showed up in areas such as Medicare ($34 billion), Medicaid ($22 billion), and unemployment insurance ($17.5 billion). That $125 billion is more money than was spent on foreign policy, the space program and the Federal judicial system combined!

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." -Thomas Jefferson. I think this should apply to waste and fraud in government as well as "unexplained projects".

Democrat Anthony Weiner, who said "I wrote the bill ... the bill and I are one," about Obamacare, scales new heights of hypocrisy. He wants an exemption from the law. (There are over 1000 already.)

Remember all the times we were told that "if you like your insurance, you can keep it"? Well, recently the Obama administration admitted that there actually is a huge incentive for businesses to dump employer-sponsored coverage. The HHS official acknowledging this attempted to portray this as a positive outcome of the legislation. Some excellent reasons to repeal Obamacare: increases health care costs, causes insurance premiums to rise, hurts quality of health care, nearly $570 billion in tax hikes, adds over $500 billion to the debt.