Ever since I was in kindergarten I have liked recess. Everyone loves recess…well, most
everyone. Congressional recess isn’t as much fun as it used to be. US Representatives
and Senators travel home multiple times each year to bask in the glory and gratitude from
constituent’s for gifts brought home from the federal treasury. Recess August 2009 was
different.

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) recently attended a healthcare town-hall meeting where he
expected the customary warm applause from his Pennsylvanian subjects. Such applause
was embarrassingly replaced with jeers from an irate crowd of natives that more
resembled a lynch-mob than humble slaves.

Many rulers in Washington DC can’t understand why Americans aren’t receptive to the
latest gift of universal health care. Mr. President, Senators and Representatives let me
explain why. (We will be done before your August recess is over.)

Take the number 1.8 trillion; it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of that number.
You my find it useful to look at it this way: Pretend you are Uncle Sam driving an 18-
wheeler through time. Stacked neatly in the back of your refrigerator-unit are $1.8
trillion cold, crisp one-dollar bills. Your job is to drive along and fund the US
government by pitching cash out the window in the exact amount that was spent each
second by the federal government.

The year is 1900 when you leave Washington DC. At the rate of $20 per second, by the
years end you have tossed $0.63 billion dollars out the window. If you started this job
right out of high school you would be 81 years old and it would be 1963 before you
emptied your truck of the $1.8 trillion dollars. It took 63 years and two world wars for
the US government to spend $1.8 trillion dollars.

It wasn’t until 1988 that our federal government had grown and conditioned itself to
spend over $1.8 trillion dollars in a single year…without becoming winded. You would
have to shovel $57,077 dollars per second out your window to spend $1.8 trillion dollars
in a year.

Fast forward to today. The total projected federal spending for 2009 is $3.997 trillion
dollars (a spending rate of $126 million dollars per second). However $1.8 trillion
dollars of that is actually deficit spending; money we will borrow from the Chinese and
then dump the IOU on our grandchildren. We will borrow more money for constituent
freebees in one year than it took to fund the entire government from 1900 to 1963.
Obviously that is not sustainable.

Mr. President, Senators and Representatives, if you want recess to be fun again, go back
to Washington and do nothing. Play golf, go fishing, have cocktail parties, travel
overseas on informational junkets, smile and act bipartisan, just don’t pass any
legislation. We simple people out here in flyover country will be fine if you just get the
hell out of the way. We neither need your help nor want your debt. Leave us alone!
Attention Montana voters! If you give me a veto-proof conservative majority in the 2011
Montana legislative session we will nullify this senseless, expensive, binding regulation
the federal government is cramming down our throats. Apparently, there isn’t the votes
to stop this madness at the national level so we will do it right here at home.
The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution tells us the federal government has
stepped far beyond their authority and it is the obligation of the states to hold them
accountable. States must take a stand or our republic will perish as has every democracy
in world history. Have you had enough?