It has finally happened, the United States has made a small step; saving taxpayers about $220 million over the next three years, in Medicaid reform. A new law that should never have been needed will go into effect on July 1 that requires all Medicaid recepiants to provide either a birth certificate or a valid passport in order to receive Medicaid payments from the states Medicaid agencies.
This bill will help in saving the taxpayers money by removing the illegal immigrants who receive Medicaid from our system. The bill takes a huge leap forward in making it possible to give Medicaid payments to only citizens of the United States, a way in which the program should have been functioning all along.
We never should have been forced to make this law and in my estimates will have to follow this bill in the near future with the same requirements given to all of our welfare based state and federal agencies. For too long we as American taxpayers have been footing the bill for illegal aliens and it is about time that our government stepped up to the plate and did something to stop our handouts, especially to non-citizens.
The next step is for our political leaders to finally realize that these social programs were not intended to give full benefits, living wages and free healthcare to Americans, but rather to help cover SOME cost while they got back onto their feet. These programs were designed to give Americans that had gone through a rough spot and needed help a temporary fix, and allow themselves to step up to the challenge of making their own lives better.
Today however many people on the left believe that we need to give handouts for life. This gives the person who is too lazy to get or keep a job no reason to adjust his attitude torward life and the good feeling of supporting yourself. Why should the lazy man do that when he can have almost everything paid for by every honest American taxpayer while he barely holds down a part time job and watches late nite TV. The liberals have used there social programs to corrupt the peoples sense of self-pride and ambition. Let us remember that you don't need to have a job that pays $30,000 per year to get bye in this country; it just means you can not allow yourself to have 4 kids and 2 cars. Not everyone needs to live in a 4 bedroom house with a white picket fence. Let us not forget in todays society of federal grants and affirmative action that everyone has the oppurtunity to go to college and recieve a good education. Not everyone has the drive. Don't punish those who had the drive to go to college pay for an equal life for those who don't have the drive to truely excell at life.

Remember: Work harder, millions on welfare depend on you!

It has been a little over 3 years since the United States began "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Since that time our forces in Iraq have struggled with a war unlike we have ever seen before. It is a war where the enemy does not wear a uniform and has no regard for the people that they claim they are helping. The doubters and ney-sayers to our continued war in Iraq are calling on President Bush to begin to immediatly pull troops out of that recovering Middle Eastern country. Pulling our troops completely out of Iraq at this stage would be foolish and prove to the world that we only break the china and do not put it back together.
There were three reasons that President Bush and congress decided to take military action in Iraq and oust Sadaam; possession of weapons that violated the treaty agreed upon by Iraq and the U.N. after the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, the Iraqi governments sponsorship of terrorism, and to liberate the Iraqi people from the hands of a cruel and brutal dictator that cared more for his absolute power than the lives of those that he ruled.
First, regardless of rather or not some in this country will admit it; Sadaam did possess weapons that the U.N. had banned him from having. After 1991 Iraq was no longer allowed to posses the SCUD missle; however he continued to build more of these modile desert missles and in fact used them during the days of routine military action against his corrupt government. A brigade of the U.S. Army 2nd Armored Battallion found a facility during the third day of the invasion that had all the equipment required to make nuclear weapons. This facility was so well camoflaged in the desert that the U.S. forces literally ran into the buildings during a sand storm. U.S. and British forces also uncovered massive amounts of Iraqi warheads that still contained residue from various chemical agents. This proves that Sadaam had chemical weapons loaded into warheads and then decided that since he could not defeat coalition forces, he would hide all his weapons and create a political firestorm around his situation that would cloud international judgement towards his crimes against humanity. A decision that has proven to be very effective in all the nations that took part in the operations against Iraq. On a side note I would like to point out that ever since Sadaam's government was overthrown both Iran and Syria have made vast strides in their nuclear development and that raises, at least to me, a concern that Sadaam may have sent his nuclear technology across the border.
Secondly, Sadaam did support terror and did support al-Quida. Even though he did not directly fund the attacks on 9/11 it does not make him innocent of supporting terrorism. The fact that the Iraqi dictator hired a terrorist to kill former President George H.W. Bush after he had left office is huge proof that Iraq has supported terrorism. Coalition forces throughout Iraq have found financial statement and letters from government officials that support the fact that Sadaam and his brutal regime supported terrorism.
Finally, the people of Iraq are free from an extremely brutal dictatorship. We have topples a government that has tested chemical weapons against its own people, and punishes a soccer team for poor performance by torture. The vast majority of the Iraqi people thank the U.S., U.K. and all the members of the coalition for saving them and allowing them to vote in open elections and enjoy security from their national government instead of fear.
With that said I would like to remind everyone that President Bush is doing an excellent job in Iraq. He is leaving the planning up to the Generals and not trying to interfer with the professionals that are there to advise and coordinate military actions. As for a complete withdrawl of troops in Iraq immediatly, it is shear stupidity. We have come so far and sacrificed so much (especially the families of fallen soldiers) to ensure our freedom and security as well as that of the Iraqi freedom. The insurgents are becoming desperate to win, and know that the one thing that will force us to withdraw is the slant of the media. War is never a pretty thing, it is ugly and cold, but we cannot allow ourselves to be fooled into believing that the members of a fractional minority speak for an entire people; a people that are greatful.
As to bringing our boys home; let us do it a quickly as possible without jeapordizing all that they have sacrificed for. Last week the Pentagon announced a plan that would reduce the troop levels in Iraq by one-third over the next three months and then plans to re-evaluate and hopefully leave a safe and secure Iraq by mid 2007. When we first began this "War on Terror" President Bush warned that this would not be a quick war, and that we could not lose our resolve. These are things that every American needs to remember for the months and years to come.

After September 11, 2001 this country passed the PATRIOT Act, which had inside of it measures to toughen airport security and allow for the NSA and other federal organizations to more easily watch those who are or may become terrorists inside of this country. Now that the United States has gone four and a half years without an attack on our soil some are starting to complain that the measures in the PATRIOT Act are starting to infringe on our civil liberities. The most recent of these complaints are centering around the NSA's use of wiretaps to catch and profile suspected terrorists.
Many people are complaining that the use of these wiretaps are infringing on the rights of these Americans, if you can call them Americans since most are immigrants without citizen status. What the vast leftist media is not telling the everyday American about these wiretaps is that they are all done with the courts' permission and they do not actually, in most cases, listen to the conversation taking place but rather mark who these people call, where the calls are going, and how often they call certain people and locations.
These capabilities are the same that the NSA used on citizens even before 9/11, and in my opinion do not infringe on anybodies individual rights. Since all the wiretaps are done with the courts approval and private conversations are rarely recorded they do not infringe on any Constitutional rights that are extended to privacy or illegal warrants.
The other post PATRIOT Act measure that liberals have been raising a fuss about is the tightened airport security and the screening of all baggage. The left claims that these measures violate our right to privacy and that no one has the right to search our persons or baggage just because we are getting on an airplane. They also claim that the heightened measures of security should only apply to international flights and not domestic; forgetting perhaps that all the planes that the terrorists used as weapons against on 9/11 were domestic.
These reports and claims of civil liberities violations are just a leftist attack on the conservatives in this country and the sense of duty they feel to protect us from our unseen enemies. After all arrests are made on almost a daily basis as more and more terroristis in this country are being identified with the tools that the PATRIOT Act gave to law enforcement. Is it not better to go through the inconvinience of airport security to know that tommorrow morning we will not be waking up to the obituaries of thousands of Americans in the paper.

This nations tax system is irrational and out of date. It takes countless hours for the average American to do their taxes and the majority of them still get it wrong. Our tax code is thousands of pages long and is more centered on attempting to overtax the wealthy than it is with generating any actual revenue. If we were more concerned with generating tax revenue, than we are with making political statements through tax, we would switch to a flat tax.
A flat tax on everyones income of this nation would allow for less man hours and money to be spent on doing your taxes and give the vast majority of citizens a tax return every time. The liberals fight a flat tax claiming that it would directly benefit the wealthy and leave the working man paying additional taxes. This statement and bogus if you look at, and use, basic economic principals and entry level math; some common sense won't hurt you either. The truth is a flat tax would allow everyone to pay the same percentage to the federal government, but the wealthiest Americans would pay a much higher percentage in total tax revenue.
If the flat tax would start at let's just say 15% and start taxing single Americans at $5,000; couples at $10,000; and families at $15,000 then it is only logical to see that almost every American would receive a refund and the wealthier the person is the more tax dollars they automatically generate. To make this work we would also have to scale back the claims you can make to taxes by making them to where the only two things you can claim is charitable donations and mortgage interest.
This system despite liberal claims that it would greatly benefit the wealthy is totally false. It would instead create more tax revenue from the wealthy simply because they have more money to invest and taxed from. This is our answer to balancing the budget, saving government welfare and medicaid; as long as we can also rein those programs under control, and give us the money we need to strengthen our defense programs; as well as any other under-budgeted government program.
If the people in Washington cared about gaining control of national spending and being fair to the tax paying American they would have no choice but to accept a flat tax. However the liberals have the vast majority of true flat tax supporters pigeon holed due to the false political pressure that they give to the flat tax. Let us be fair to all tax payers in this country and pass a flat tax in the interest of both the nation and the individual.

Every single person in this country will agree that it is time for education reform. The United States is trailing behind almost every other modernized country when it comes to education. Liberals believe and continue to attempt to solve our education problems by throwing more and more money at education. More money being pumped into education is not the answer; after all look at our tremendous education success in the 1940's and 1950's when the federal government spent very little on education. Rather than using more and more money to answer our education systems short comings; we must implement solid curriculum, scaling down standardized testing, and place every school in the nation on an even keel.
The liberals have ravaged our education system by removing curriculum that works, especially in history and government, and replacing it with multicultural sensitivity training. They have forced teachers hands to curriculum that has very little to do with highlighting our nations founding and major turning points; but rather the liberals curriculum teaches students about the blemishes on our record and highlights the places in our past that we did not stand as tall as we do now. This curriculum is designed to breed the liberal thought process, that America can do no right, into the minds of young school children. We can no longer stand by and allow our children to be cheated out of their education, and especially a true understand of the history of this nation, by a vast minority like the left.
Standardized testing in this country has gotten way out of hand. What is sad is that the liberals have created such a fuss over the teachers in this country being unmotivated and not up to snuff that we have actually created the very same situation. The vast majority of the teachers in this country, including inner-city, are extremely motivated, love their kids and love teaching. Teachers in every school are not the enemy to American education, but rather the standardized tests that they are forced to teach to are. When our fine educators are starting to teach to tests they are no longer teaching; we must bring true education back into the classroom, by scaling down the exponentially growing problem of standardized testing.
While I am thinking about how many people blame the teachers for the fact that we can not get everyone to pass a series of standardized test, I would like to make this little side comment. Almost every teacher in this country cares greatly about their students, however there are a bunch of students and their parents that just do not care about their education or their child's education. My mom is a teacher, and I would not do her job for any amount of money; especially not what they pay her, and the biggest problem she has in getting students to pass is the fact that they do not care and their parents do not care. Before our education system can go forward and we do not leave a single child behind; we must fight in-home contempt to education.
Finally when it comes to educational spending we must place every school on an even financial keel. That means that the federal government needs to stop spending so much on education and the states need to ensure that the same dollar amount per student is spent in every school in the state. To illustrate my point let me give you a living look at the education spending monster from my home state of Texas, a "Robin Hood" state. About one-hundred miles from me is a tiny school district, the Miami Independent School District, and they have a large amount of tax revenue; more than the tiny school needs. Now the Texas Education Commission has decided that since Miami does not need all that money they can send some to a poorer school district in need of financial help. Not a bad plan; until you realize that Miami, due to state forced financial shortcomings is having to consider closing its doors and merging with a not so near by school; remember I live in the rural Texas Panhandle. All the while Miami is struggling to stay open, their "sister" school in Arlington has enough extra revenue that they can afford to buy each student both textbooks and personal laptops. This is why every state must be responsible and spend the same dollar amount PER STUDENT regardless of the size OR location of the school.