Could you make your family budget look good in a ten-year analysis if you counted ten years of income but only seven of expenditures? That’s what the Congressional Budget Office did in their report on Senator Max Baucus’s health care bill.

Their subpar accounting includes revenue from tax increases and cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage starting in 2010. However, the bulk of expenditures begin in 2013, when many of the bill’s programs go into effect. It sounds like the CBO has started taking accounting tips from old Enron manuals. How can Democrats be taken seriously if they use ten years of revenue to pay for seven years of expenditures?

It’s frightening that Congress could soon vote on a bill that will cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars without the crucial information of an honest CBO score. But that’s just what Democrats will ask us all to do. It is smoke-and-mirrors trickery that should have no place in Congress – a deceitful playbook from which the Congressional Majority has played from time and time again.

Democrats will use these CBO numbers to continue the charade that their proposals would reduce health care costs for Americans. But one only has to look at the dozens of new taxes Senator Baucus’s bill creates to see that health care will become much more expensive for Americans. And for the first three years, we really won’t be getting what we’re paying for.

If the White House “misread” our entire economy back in January, should we trust it to read—and manipulate—even a fraction of the economy now? Logic says no. Yet, the health care industry makes up approximately one sixth of the entire U.S. economy, and many Washington Democrats are rushing to redesign it in the next week.

Think it won’t happen? Let’s take a trip down memory lane…

The push to pass the stimulus bill was frenzied and hasty. Over $787 billion was spent before you could say “shovel-ready.”

Fast forward six months.

Unemployment has climbed to nearly 10% as stories of wasteful stimulus projects are repeated on a daily basis. Whether it’s putting skylights in a state alcohol warehouse in Montana or buying a dishwasher in Colorado with money meant for meals, stimulus dollars seem to be going towards everything except creating jobs.

Now, with only a single week to go before the August break, the CBO is estimating that despite the cost-cutting rhetoric, the House Democrats’ health care proposal will increase America’s deficit by $239 billion over the next ten years. $239 billion is an awfully large increase for health care reform that was supposed to “save” money. It’s also a lot of money to spend by next week.

Americans are all wondering how they are going to afford their health care in their budgets. Shouldn’t Congress?

It is time for liberal lawmakers to learn from their mistakes and think through their health care reform proposal before it’s rushed to the floor for a vote. Last time Washington panicked and overspent, the American people didn’t get the economic recovery they paid for. Are we going to get the health care we pay for? The answer will be “no” unless Americans speak out and make their voices heard in the halls of Congress.

The Department of Defense is moving forces from Okinawa to Guam – all well and good. Except, the recently passed DOD Authorization contains funding for construction firms to pay their workers wages consistent with labor rates in Hawaii – 250% HIGHER than wages in Guam.

This will not only take over $10 billion (over 10 years) needed dollars out of the pockets of wounded service members, but will pad the pockets of Hawaii’s labor unions while hurting small businesses in Guam.

As we vote on funding for critical programs for our Nation’s Veterans and construction of our military instillations, it is important to ensure the timely and adequate delivery of these services.

This provision provides labor unions dollars, that in my opinion, are more crucial and can be better spent on military hospitals as they deliver first-class health care to our wounded soldiers.