The President stood before the joint Houses of Congress and caste a stern, accusatory glare at the Republican side of the aisle, warning them that he and his administration will expose and do battle with any or all of them that spread what he deems to be “lies, plain and simple” about his nationalized healthcare plan.

Democrats in attendance nodded approvingly and showed their solidarity through applause.

Republicans sneered at the challenge and rolled their eyes in recalcitrant rebellion, waving printed copies of counter proposals and at one point vocally accusing the accuser of misdirection and prevarication himself.

It all made for some action packed television viewing, but when it was over we were no closer to a solution then we were before it started. For all the sanctimony of Democrats and all the insurrection of the Republicans, the basic question of how the hell we are going to pay for this or any other healthcare plan remains in the realm of magic money.

Never mind the “death panels”. Never mind if illegal aliens will only get the same level of free healthcare that they now enjoy and take full advantage of. Never mind the overwhelming deluge of paperwork that would be required by governmental intervention into healthcare. Never mind the dramatically increased costs to healthcare providers by the never-ending barrage of bureaucratic bungling historically evident anytime the government gets involved. Never mind the reduced payments to healthcare providers and reduced services those diminished payments will mandate. Never mind having most of your healthcare decisions made for you by an actuarial pivot table of synthesized cost versus life expectancy. Never mind that not a single person in attendance at the speech will be forced into coverage of this healthcare debacle like the rest if the country will.

Even if we were able to surmount these insurmountable obstacles, we still have absolutely no clue as to how we are going to pay for it.

We as a nation are projected to be heading into an abyss of a $9 trillion debt. Barack Obama spent two years on the campaign trail decrying the eminent collapse of our economy because of the Bush budget deficit forecasted at $410 billion. He constantly reminded voters that the Bush deficit was close to the historic high water mark set in 2004 of $413 billion. The entire Bush 2009 budget unveiled in February 2008 totaled $3.1 trillion in spending. That included $515 billion in defense spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was an additional $70 billion proposed for defense that raised the entire spending package to $3.17 trillion. That means that the entire spending package for the United States in 2009, including the war, was one third of the currently projected budget deficit of 2019. And that is before you add in this new $1 trillion in ObamaCare spending.

Because of the weakening economy George Bush froze almost all domestic spending programs in his 2009 budget. The fact that we are even engaged in conversation about a new $1 trillion spending package with the already looming economic catastrophe of a $9 trillion debt would be laughable of it weren’t so nauseating.

Obama spent a great deal of time detailing what he would or would not accept in this package of vitiate socialized medical temerity. But when it came to how it was going to be paid for he switched back into magician mode and brought out the smoke and mirrors.

Claiming to be able to pay for new spending through cost savings is the oldest political trick in the book. It means that the proposer has no idea how things will actually get paid. The President promised that this new program would not add a dime to the national debt. But when it came to detailing the math, well I guess that’s where the Hope he campaigned on comes in.

The discussion needs to stop. We’re broke. Hell, we’re worse than broke. Period. End of story.

It is a shame the rumors of those death panels are supposedly untrue. With a $9 trillion budget deficit we could use them to review the American way of life.

The day after the new president worked the halls of congress like a veteran standup comedian working at the Improv, the Democrat controlled House of Representatives passed an additional earmark riddled spending bill totaling $410 billion.

This move is absolutely beyond comprehension. Having just signed away $787 billion of our great-grandchildren’s money this additional spending will bring this insane spending spree total to just shy of $1.2 trillion dollars. And they haven’t even begun looking at the regular budget yet.

The passage of this bill demonstrates the absurd insincerity of President Obama’s so called fiscal responsibility summit and the committees he has put into place to monitor spending. It also calls into question both his sincerity and sanity in alleging that he will be able to cut the federal deficit in half within his first four years, as this new spending totals more than the original deficit.

After falsely claiming that he was able to persuade lawmakers to keep earmarks out of the so called stimulus bill, Obama made no such publicity stunt on this first non-emergency spending measure of his presidency. The result was that lawmakers claimed billions in federal funds for pet projects with a total of 8,570 earmarks.

While Obama makes sure that banks and financial institutions cut the pay and benefits of their directors, and congress questions whether or not Wall Street CEO’s are using the self-service pumps to fill their American made hybrids, this new legislation provides increases of roughly 8 percent for the federal agencies it covers or about $32 billion more than last year.

Among just some of the more than 8,000 new earmarks are a quarter if a million dollars for a “tattoo removal violence outreach program”. You simply can’t make stuff like that up. There are also nearly a dozen earmarks aimed at giving money to clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying company now at the center of a federal corruption investigation. Federal prosecutors are investigating PMA Group’s founder and president, Paul Magliochetti, who is a former top aide to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., and Chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds defense programs. The company’s offices were raided earlier in February and PMA Group has announced plans to disband by the end of the month.

As the country spirals into the depths of the worst recession since World War II this new legislation is estimated to grow the size of government by 8.3 percent. The problem is that the family budget which has to pay for the federal budget only grew at 1.3 percent last year, and that was before the real depths of the recession took hold.

Once again Democrats are trying to pin the blame on Republicans for the current economic troubles, but anyone that bothers to look at reality will see that it was a Democrat controlled congress in the last two years of the Bush presidency that led the way for the times we face today. Bush can certainly be held accountable for not vetoing their spending but he can’t be blamed for causing it.

With the ever increasing debt load this country is incurring I doubt we will have to worry about foreign investors making waves in the Treasury bill market. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday that he believes this economic recession will be over by year’s end. That statement however was based on a Bush era budget deficit. With the Democrats now raising the debt ceiling by over 300% in just the first month of the administration of change I doubt Bernanke or anybody else has the slightest idea of the devastation this overspending will cause.

Republicans are beseeching the president to veto this new spending package and live up to his claim of cutting out earmarks from the congressional landscape.

When it comes to his promises let’s see if this president is a stand up guy or just a standup comedian.