CA resisting pension reform even though system is $50 billion in the hole, gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown ignorant

The pension tsunami - aka the incessant need for liberal-run unions to force governments to make promises that cannot possibly be met - is on its way. Less than a month ago I wrote a post regarding the pension problem in Michigan (Michigan Pension System $50 Billion In The Hole, Healthcare Liablity Only 1.9% Funded. Detroit Free Press Finds Silver Lining: "On the bright side, it's worse elsewhere"). That was followed up with this dire news: Pension tsunami: States face $1 Trillion shortfall, 20 states have no assets on hand to cover their obligations. California is perhaps the worst of the bunch as fr as kowtowing to public sector unions, and are refusing to face up to reality. From the Orange County Register via Instapundit: Editorial: Other states fixing pension mess, but not California

Despite facing a $50 billion future debt for unfunded public employee pensions, California still resists reforms that some other states have adopted. Continued delay potentially adds to the obligation of taxpayers, who are responsible to make good on the retirement promises government makes.

Politically powerful California government unions are the reason reforms haven't been implemented. But in 17 other states, benefits have been lowered for new hires, retirement ages extended and employee contributions increased.

And perhaps by constitutional law, such as here in MI, the taxpayers are on the hook no matter what:

California taxpayers are legally responsible to pay what's owed if too little is set aside or earned in investments to cover these expenses. Recent pension fund investment losses aggravated California's problem, now estimated to be $50-billion more than the state has set aside.

Nationwide, a $1 trillion gap exists between what's funded and what's promised by governments at all levels, the Pew Center on the States estimates. In the past two years, the expanding shortfall has prompted 10 states to increase retirement contributions by employees and 10 states to lower new employees' benefits, or increase their retirement age and required years of service.

But the vast majority of California local and state governments haven't acted. Moreover, a ballot initiative to roll back benefits for new hires died for lack of financial backing to qualify it for the November ballot. Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January proposed state workers increase their contributions by 5 percent, he's left it to a reluctant, union-shy Legislature to make the reform happen.

In a recent Register op-ed column, GOP candidate for governor Meg Whitman said new state workers should have retirement plans with fixed employer contributions, like 401(k) accounts in the private sector, rather than the existing defined-benefit plans. She also called for retirement age to be increased from 55 to 65 for most current state workers, with longer vesting periods and increased contributions.

Replacing fixed-benefit systems would reduce taxpayers' exposure if pension-fund investments tank, and requiring employees to contribute more to their own retirements could reduce taxpayers' upfront costs, as well. But so far, unions remain opposed to their members paying more or losing guaranteed benefits. We're interested to see how Ms. Whitman would implement her reforms, but leaving it to the Legislature as Mr. Schwarzenegger has probably dooms the effort.

Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown had a few words regarding the pension systems, and his answer was in a word bad: (click to play)

Ugh. He thinks having a 401 (k) is the same as giving money to Wall Street, yet the CA pension fund has itself sustained losses because bureaucrats - egads! - put the money on the market all the same! It's just a matter of who controls the money - you or the bureaucrats. Relatedly, there was also this from Michael Barone via Instapundit: Low-tax Texas Beats Big-government California.

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state's history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress -- or lack of it -- over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.

Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million -- all originally extracted from taxpayers -- into effective TV ads.

Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California -- almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes -- and no state income taxes -- and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores -- and with a demographically similar school population -- are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas' economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California. Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment.

Michigan also has a full-time legislature. Can you imagine lawmakers meeting only 90 days every 2 years? It's like a dream. And the results - well - speak for themselves, no?

Single-Payer Hell: Neglected by ‘lazy’ nurses, British man dying of thirst rang the police to beg for water. Later died at age 22

Make no mistake that this is always going to be the end result of a nationalized system run by uncaring bureaucrats. The story of government-run healthcare has a common thread - rationing. Rationing leads to lower quality as there is no incentive to produce expensive life-saving medicines and techniques. No government-run system embodies all that is wrong and unholy with the very concept of Obamacare more than Britain's barbaric, medieval, hellhole the National Health Service (NHS), the 3rd largest employer in the world with more bureaucrats on the payroll than doctors. In Britain, under the draconian NHS, cancer patients are denied life-saving drugs to save money, Alzheimer's patients are denied coverage because the disease is not classified as a health condition, deny patients life-extending drugs because of the expense, broken arms sometimes take up to 10 months to fix, babies born prematurely are left to die if they come out before a certain date, terminally ill patients, and some that are not ill at all, are put on a fast track to death, grandmas are left to die of starvation, patients with chest pains are sent home with pain pills only to die later that same day, women give birth on the pavement, and in hospital toilets and hallways, and prisoners eat better than NHS patients. More than 1 million people are subject to neglectful care and surgeries have failure rates up to 33%, with some surgeries done or not done in error, the infirm are routinely neglected and patients die routinely due to filth and blood-splattered equipment. The horror stories go on and on, such as the one's I have written about at the end of this post. BUT... NHS does have money to have violent child predators put on Viagra, and to irreversibly mutilate 12-year olds. Oh yeah - the bureaucrats exempt themselves from NHS and instead get private coverage. Natch. Add to those horror stories this one from the U.K. Daily Mail via Instapundit: Neglected by 'lazy' nurses, man, 22, dying of thirst rang the police to beg for water

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.

Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.

They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.

She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. 'He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.'

A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police.

Sources say they are investigating the possibility of a corporate manslaughter charge against St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London.

...His 50-year-old mother says that he needed to take drugs three times a day to regulate his hormones. Doctors had told him that without the drugs he would die.

Although he had stressed to staff how important his medication was, she said, no one gave him the drugs.

She said that two days after his hip operation, while Miss Cronin was at work, he became severely dehydrated but his requests for water were refused.

He became aggressive and nurses called in security guards to restrain him.

After they had left, he rang the police from his bed to demand their help.

Miss Cronin, who is divorced from her son's father Peter, said: 'The police told me he'd said, "Please help me. All I want is a drink and no one is helping me".

...The death certificate said Mr Gorny had died because of a 'water deficit' and 'hypernatraemia' - a medical term for dehydration.

The hospital did an internal investigation and found nothing wrong, although they changed some of their procedures and made the nurses sign a public pledge that they will treat everyone with compassion and dignity. They have to sign a pledge? Isn't that like rule 1 of a nurse? For those that are proponents of nationalized healthcare, explain these statistics and tell me how Obamacare will be different:

Average cancer survival rate in U.S: 68%
Average cancer survival rate in Canada: 55%
Average cancer survival rate in Europe: 45%

Average prostate cancer survival rate in U.S: 81%
Average prostate cancer survival rate in Britain: 43%

Average breast cancer survival rate in U.S: 83.9%
Average breast cancer survival rate in Europe: 73.1%
Average breast cancer survival rate in the U.K: 69.7%

Our system is not broken. It is the best in the world. It costs more money, but that cost can be reduced by passing tort reform that would lower ridiculously high malpractice insurance rates. Also, with a stroke of a pen Congress can break down the barriers that currently preclude insurance companies from competing across state lines. All of a sudden, every citizen will have 1,500 choices for their care. Nationalizing our healthcare will only lead to medieval treatment such as that in the NHS system.


Previously:
Single-Payer Hell: 1,200 needless deaths, elderly patients mistreated, routinely neglected, left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month in state-run ritish NHS hospital
Single-Payer Hell: British NHS sends 500,000 patients home too early every year
Single-Payer Hell: Drug that extends life for terminal liver cancer patients 'too expensive'
Single-Payer Hell: Bleeding Pregnant Woman Refused Scan, Lied To, Sent Home, Loses Baby Boy
Single-Payer Hell: 70 Patients Dead Due To Neglect, Filth, Blood-Splattered Equipment
Single-Payer Hell: In Britain While Millions Suffer Under NHS "Healthcare," NHS Staff Get PRIVATE TREATMENT!!!
Single-Payer Hell: British NHS kills grandfather anyway after he beat cancer
Single-Payer Hell: Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve to death
Single-Payer Hell: British NHS Takes 10 Months To Fix Badly Broken Arm
U.K. healthcare epiphany: You know, we should really be encouraging old people to kill themselves
British NHS doesn't have money to treat cancer patients, but has money for sex change of 12-year old boy
Single-Payer Hell: Life-Saving Drug Nixed In U.K. To Save Cost
Single-Payer Hell: A mother in the U.K.: 'Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby'
Single-Payer Hell: Patients With Terminal Illnesses Made To Die Prematurely Under British Health Care System - NHS. Death Panels are real!
Single-Payer Hell: Prisoners Eat Better Than NHS Patients
Single-Payer Hell: British patients sue over 33% failure rate for operations
Single-Payer Hell: In Britain, 'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed
Single-Payer Hell: Man collapses with ruptured appendix... three weeks after NHS doctors 'took it out'
Single-Payer Hell: Babies In The U.K. Born In Hospital Corridors, Toilets
Single-Payer Hell: British NHS Deny Alzheimers Funding Because "Alzheimer's Is Not A Health Condition"
Single-Payer Hell: In Britain, Unincarcerated Child Molester Being Given Viagra!
Single-Payer Hell: Woman in U.K. Denied Ambulance, Gives Birth On Pavement
The British National Health Service is the 3rd largest employer IN THE WORLD! Behind Chinese army, Indian rail
British National Health Service Sends Patient With Chest Pains Home With Pain Pills, Patient Dies

Glenn Reynolds: Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof

This is a great piece that I got to read today versus We The People and our wayward federal government. The political class, and the media elite, mistake the tea-party movement as anti-government. It's not. Rather, it is pro-limited government, which is what the Founding Fathers set out to create:

From Glenn Reynolds at the Washington Examiner via memeorandum, Instapundit: Consent of the governed — and the lack thereof

Our Declaration of Independence observes:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

"Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This is boilerplate American history, and something that Americans -- and, in particular, America's political class -- have long taken for granted.

But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the "political class" believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.

The other 37 percent of the political class, as Glenn points out later in his piece, "are comfortable being tyrants." I suspect that a greater percentage than 37% are comfortable being tyrants regardless of the consent of the governed. That is why these leftists are doing everything they possibly can to institutionalize government dependency. If they had their way, every citizen in the country would be on government food stamps and ObamaCare. To this end, they have been increasingly taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive. As the saying goes, if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you will always have the support of Paul. When more than 50% of the population pays no federal income taxes whatsoever, who is going to vote for changing that? The minority who actually fuel the leviathan? When the majority of the population is dependent on the government, who will vote for change and who will vote instead for the status quo? And that is the ultimate reason for the drive by Obama towards a culture of government dependency, a culture antithesis to the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Thus, I suspect that although 37% of the political class appear comfortable being tyrants, there is an additional chunk of the 63% of the political class that believe that the government does indeed enjoy the consent of the governed, even if their ends are utterly unconstitutional, as their constituents are part of the dependency class that they are themselves creating (or saving). Glenn likens the tarnishing of the federal government's brand to that of Schlitz beer:

In fact, when I think of the federal government's brand now, I think of Schlitz beer. Schlitz was once a top national brew. But, in search of short-term gains, it began gradually reducing its quality in tiny increments to save money, substituting cheaper malt, fewer hops and "accelerated" brewing for its traditional approach.

Each incremental decline was imperceptible to consumers, but after a few years, people suddenly noticed that the beer was no good anymore. Sales collapsed, and a "Taste My Schlitz" campaign designed to lure beer drinkers back failed when the "improved" brew turned out not to be any better. A brand image that had been accumulated over decades was lost in a few years, and it has never recovered.

One can only hope that the federal government as it is set up now goes the way of Schlitz. The beast must be starved into shrinking back to what it once was by design. Getting there though is going to require some pain, and things don't yet seem bad enough - unfortunately - for enough people to be willing to go through that. But we're getting there.

Video from Popular Mechanics: How To Handle Sudden Unintended Acceleration

When the news broke that Toyota was going to recall a ton of cars due to sudden acceleration that caused several deaths, I wondered why people didn't just put the car into neutral. I figured they would think of that before hitting 130mph and losing control. Via Instapundit:

MI state employee pay up 5.5% in last 3 years, feds up 7.5%, private sector down 10.3%

The road to serfdom ends when public servants become public masters. That really is a dead end. The raod to serfom is one incrementally traveled until recently when the accelerator was depressed via continued public sector expansion while the private sector has been shrinking. Under Granholm, Michigan's largest employer is now the government, she will by her own admission have lost more than 1,000,000 private-sector jobs by the end of her 2nd term, has by her own admission used schoolchildren as human shields for tax increases, gave the SEIU $3 million rather than to small businesses to expand in MI, slashed scholarships while handing out taxpayer money to her political cronies, etc. Everything to accelerate the expansion of government while simultaneously shrinking the private sector, exactly what Obama is doing on the national level. MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop was right when he said "Jennifer Granholm was Barack Obama before Barack Obama was Barack Obama." Here's what the federal level looks like via USA Today: Federal pay ahead of private industry

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

So they get paid better for a far more secure job. So the benefits surely can't be as good, right? Well they are as good, and far better. And don't call me Shirley:

These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

You read that right - more than 4-fold better than for supposed servants than for the served.

"The data flip the conventional wisdom on its head," says Cato Institute budget analyst Chris Edwards, a critic of federal pay policy. "Federal workers make substantially more than private workers, not less, in addition to having a large advantage in benefits."

Indeed. USA Today also made this table comparing wages (no bennies in this chart) between federal and private occupations:

Job comparison

Average federal salaries exceed average private-sector pay in 83% of comparable occupations. A sampling of average annnual salaries in 2008, the most recent data:

Job	Federal	Private	Difference
Airline pilot, copilot, flight engineer	$93,690	$120,012	-$26,322
Broadcast technician	$90,310	$49,265	$41,045
Budget analyst	$73,140	$65,532	$7,608
Chemist	$98,060	$72,120	$25,940
Civil engineer	$85,970	$76,184	$9,786
Clergy	$70,460	$39,247	$31,213
Computer, information systems manager	$122,020	$115,705	$6,315
Computer support specialist	$45,830	$54,875	-$9,045
Cook	$38,400	$23,279	$15,121
Crane, tower operator	$54,900	$44,044	$10,856
Dental assistant	$36,170	$32,069	$4,101
Economist	$101,020	$91,065	$9,955
Editors	$42,210	$54,803	-$12,593
Electrical engineer	$86,400	$84,653	$1,747
Financial analysts	$87,400	$81,232	$6,168
Graphic designer	$70,820	$46,565	$24,255
Highway maintenance worker	$42,720	$31,376	$11,344
Janitor	$30,110	$24,188	$5,922
Landscape architects	$80,830	$58,380	$22,450
Laundry, dry-cleaning worker	$33,100	$19,945	$13,155
Lawyer	$123,660	$126,763	-$3,103
Librarian	$76,110	$63,284	$12,826
Locomotive engineer	$48,440	$63,125	-$14,685
Machinist	$51,530	$44,315	$7,215
Mechanical engineer	$88,690	$77,554	$11,136
Office clerk	$34,260	$29,863	$4,397
Optometrist	$61,530	$106,665	-$45,135
Paralegals	$60,340	$48,890	$11,450
Pest control worker	$48,670	$33,675	$14,995
Physicians, surgeons	$176,050	$177,102	-$1,052
Physician assistant	$77,770	$87,783	-$10,013
Procurement clerk	$40,640	$34,082	$6,558
Public relations manager	$132,410	$88,241	$44,169
Recreation worker	$43,630	$21,671	$21,959
Registered nurse	$74,460	$63,780	$10,680
Respiratory therapist	$46,740	$50,443	-$3,703
Secretary	$44,500	$33,829	$10,671
Sheet metal worker	$49,700	$43,725	$5,975
Statistician	$88,520	$78,065	$10,455
Surveyor	$78,710	$67,336	$11,374

I sure picked the wrong line of work as far as salary goes. A mechanical engineer working for the feds made $88,600, more than I made and I spent 6 years in grad school getting a Ph.D. On the Michigan state level, former Macomb County commissioner and leader of the Michigan Taxpayer Alliance Leon Drolet had this over at RightMichigan recently: Good times rolling for government employees

Compensation for Michigan's private sector citizens decreased by 10.3% between 2007 and the third quarter of 2009 ... State and local government employee compensation increased by 5.5% during the same period, and federal employee compensation is up by 7.5%.

And the good times will keep rolling for state government bureaucrats who are scheduled to receive a nice 3% pay increase this year unless two-thirds of state lawmakers vote to halt the pay hike.

Who pays for generous government employee pay increases in these tough times? Remember that Governor Granholm and state lawmakers hiked the state income tax by 12% and the state business tax by 22% back in 2007? Those tax hikes meant more money out of your shrinking paycheck and into the fatter paychecks of Michigan's government class.

This year, Governor Granholm needs even more money to afford her proposed state budget - which includes the state employee pay increase... Lawmakers supporting this year's state bureaucrat pay increase argue that state employees "have suffered enough" in recent budgets. But the government's own statistics show the opposite to be true: taxpayers have suffered far more than "enough" while government employee pay and benefit levels keep rising.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics documents that government employee benefits cost twice as much as full-time, private sector benefits. What accounts for the difference? Consider the jackpot benefits that many government employees receive:

* Public school employees contribute an average of 4.2% to their health care plans while private sector citizens pay an average of 22% of their own health care costs.
* Expensive "defined benefit" retirement plans are almost non-existent in the private sector, but are commonplace for public school, public university and local government employees.
* Macomb County government employees enjoy a taxpayer-paid retirement benefit that allows many to retire at the age of 50!

That's the road to serfdom right there. Public servants that are fast becoming the public masters. Liberal politicians bought and paid for by public sector employee unions that have used our very own tax dollars to buy them to boot. This is not going to end well.

WaPo's E.J. Dionne on filibusters in 2005 versus 2010

Recall that in 2005, the GOP threatened the nuclear option, but never used it, when the Democrats started filibustering judicial nominations, which had never been done before at that point. Liberals were incensed. Wringing of wrsits and gnashing of teeth ensued:

See any difference in these statements by far leftists E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post? (via The WSJ via Instapundit):

"If the Republicans pushing against the filibuster love majority rule so much, they should propose getting rid of the Senate altogether. But doing so would mean acknowledging what's really going on here: regime change disguised as a narrow rules fight. We could choose to institute a British-style parliamentary system in which majorities get almost everything they want. But advocates of such a radical departure should be honest enough to propose amending the Constitution first."--E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, March 22, 2005

"The Founders said nothing in the Constitution about the filibuster, let alone 'reconciliation.' Judging from what they put in the actual document, the Founders would be appalled at the idea that every major bill should need the votes of three-fifths of the Senate to pass."--E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, March 4, 2010

What could possibly justify such a flipflop? For liberals, the ends always justify the means. Always.

Video: Saturday Night Live Mocks ObamaCare Bill And Harry Reid

Like shooting fish in a barrel these days:

HT: Story Balloon

Video: Rep. Shea-Porter (D-kookville) invokes Obama in speech, gets booed

It's not going too well for Shea-Porter, one of the most far-left Representatives in the US House, which in and of itself says volumes. Shea-Porter is a US Rep that has been so unhinged that I have already spent half a dozen posts on her moonbat antics even though her district is a great distance from mine and many states away. Just a sampling of what I've seen of her online:

• Rep. Shea-Porter (D-kookville) polling behind every single Republican candidate 
• Video of Rep. Shea-Porter: You know what we need to pass healthcare? More vaginas, that's what! 
• Rep. Shea-Porter (D-kookville), Gets Caught In Her Own Hypocrisy 
• Video: Rep. Shea-Porter (D-kookville), former anti-war protester, gets townhall protester asking a simple question arrested, then taunts him!
•  Dem Rep. Shea-Porter on compromise: Find those tea-baggers who don’t like the idea of this and talk to them 
• Audio: Rep. Shea-Porter: Obamacare constitutional because “Constitution didn’t cover everything” or something

In perhaps her worst blunder, she had the gall to call up a reporter at the Portsmouth Herald claiming she had never been removed from a George W. Bush town hall event in 2005. But a FOIA request filed by NowHampshire.com yielded that Shea-Porter was lying through her teeth and that she had actually been removed by two police officers from that very event. In any case, all of the above, and more, just wasn't good enough. She's one of those personalities that finds themselves in a hole of their own making, and instead of discontinuing digging and climbing out, instinctively continue to shovel. So here's teh new scoop on her via HotAir: How not to run for Congress, 2010 version. This came after Pelosi came to town to raise funder for Porter:

Republicans jumped at the chance to tie Shea-Porter to Nancy Pelosi, calling her the Speaker’s “sock puppet” and the fundraiser a “nice reward” for her devotion to the Pelosi-Obama agenda. That led to this rather interesting defense by the state Democratic Party chair, Derek Richer:

State Democratic Party spokesman Derek Richer countered that Shea-Porter “has been an independent voice in Congress and will continue to fight for the best interests of her constituents.”

Richer’s defense got undermined by Shea-Porter herself six weeks ago. This clip shows the Congresswoman attempting to convince the audience that she’s working hard for her constituents — mainly by working hard for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Pay attention to the reaction:

“Just giving full disclosure here” — that the Republicans were right to call her Pelosi’s sock puppet.

Since she thinks her constituents would "love" to wait in line for healthcare, she can join them in line when the voters fire her this November.

Video: Dem-turned-GOP Rep. Parker Griffith cites ObamaCare as reason for switch in GOP weekly address

From The Hill via memeorandum:

Rep. Parker Griffith (Ala.) on Saturday stressed he joined the ranks of the Republicans last December because the Democratic Party had "lost its way" in the healthcare debate.

As congressional Democrats ready their final push on reform legislation, aiming to deliver a bill to the president's desk by the month's end, Griffith framed his defection in the GOP's weekly radio address as one motivated by his former party's pursuit of policies "dangerous for our country and out of step with our values."

"Given all that’s at stake, I realized that being a voice of dissent and a vote of conscience was not enough," Griffith said. "Shortly before Christmas, after much thought and prayer, I decided to align myself with House Republicans, who have stood on principle to fight this big-government agenda and offer better solutions to the challenges facing our country."

Here's the video of the weekly address via Gateway Pundit:

Video of Obama: If We Don’t Pass The Healthcare Reform That Costs $2.5 Trillion We Will Sink Deeper And Deeper Into Debt Or Something

Obama must be listening to Biden too much. It was Biden who said that we have to keep spending money to keep from going bankrupt:

With that as a backdrop, here is Obama via Story Balloon:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Does this guy even believe what he is saying? And isn't he the one (The One?) that points fingers at the GOP regarding fear tactics?  I remember this a while back from The One himself:

The American people understand that we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of...

Note to Obama: when finding yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING. CLIMB OUT! Digging will only deepen the hole! Yet that is exactly what he is going to try and do. According to the CBO, Obama's deficits will average $1 trillion each year for the next decade! From The Hill via Instapundit, memeorandum: CBO: Huge deficits to average $1 trillion per year over the next decade

President Barack Obama's budget will lead to deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the CBO estimated Friday.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama's budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.

Annual deficits under Obama’s budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to a CBO analysis of Obama's plan released Friday.

Those estimates don't include the fact that ObamaCare will be delivered over 6 years but for 10 years of taxes. There are several other budget gimmicks that make the plan far more expensive than what the CBO scored. In the big picture, here's what we are looking at:

1. TARP (Obama voted for it before assuming the Presidency): $700 billion
2. Bailouts: up to $23 trillion
   
3. Stimulus: $1.2 trillion (including interest over 10 years)
4. ObamaCare: up to about $7 trillion over 10 years
   
5. Cap-and-trade: $1,761 per family

That's the short list with eye-popping numbers, so you get the point. Perhaps better yet, though, since a picture is worth 1,000 words:

That dive off the cliff isn't just a one-time thing though. Here's the projections for the next 10 years:

With that information in hand, how can Obama say with a straight face that he is working with Democrats on reducing the deficit? Isn't that like a 600-lb morbidly obese person saying they will be working on their weight problem as they are walking into a buffet? Welcome to Obamaland! (suckers!)