Americans fed up with getting stuck with bill (Politico)

The voters of Southwest Missouri sent me to Washington because I was fed up.

I was fed up with out-of-control spending and an out-of-touch Washington. Fed up with the way Washington works and the poor results that it keeps churning out, year after year, no matter who?s elected. Fed up with more spending, more bailouts and more carelessness by our officials, elected to serve the country, not protect their reelection chances.

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The American people are tired of the policies that are destroying our economy, redistributing our wealth and adding to the debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay. It recently started with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, then the economic stimulus package, then ?Obamacare.? All are big expensive programs that few wanted and no one had any idea how to pay for ? just more expenses to put on the country?s credit card. For years, the debt ceiling was raised without so much as a whimper.

I?m not a politician. I?m a former small businessman of 30 years and a former morning talk show host. I?ve signed the fronts of paychecks all my life and had never run for political office. Many of my colleagues in the freshman class of 2010 share my background. They?re small-business owners, doctors, nurses and car salesmen, pizza shop owners and exterminators ? just regular people who decided they needed to get involved in politics to change the direction of our nation. Like the Founding Fathers, they want to serve their country, then go home to live under the laws they helped create.

I came into office on a wave of public approval for the ideas that I ran on: smaller government, lower taxes and more liberty. We had a mandate to control spending. Unfortunately, I think everyone, including myself, underestimated how dysfunctional our government has become.

I might have run as the fed-up candidate, but I was hopeful that, with a little bit of wit and will, common sense could prevail. But the realities of not having a Republican-controlled Senate or White House slapped me in the face. Most politicians care more about getting reelected than about doing the right thing. Sadly, even among the core group that does want to accomplish real change, folks all too often end up in a circular firing squad attacking each other, rather than taking aim at the politicians who jealously guard the broken system that benefits them.

Given my business background, I was shocked to learn that there are many members of Congress, mostly in the Senate, who don?t even support having a budget. A business can?t run successfully without a budget to keep track of revenue and expenses. Refusing to even operate under a budget is a powerful symbol of the ?money-is-no-object? attitude that still runs Washington. As the old saying goes, common sense isn?t common, at least not in Washington.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/politico_rss/rss_politico_mostpop/http___www_politico_com_news_stories0112_71481_html/44200714/SIG=11mldtgn4/*http%3A//www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71481.html

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