Have no fear, the federal government is here! Wait… that isn’t right.

I’m no damsel in distress, and neither are you. The days of a masked hero helping those in need are, so it seems, nonexistent. But that is exactly what’s unfolding before our very eyes.

The government wants to tell “we the people” how to live. Citizens, if you think politics won’t directly affect you, think again.  New York City’s mayor decided to ban sugary drink sizes to 16 ounces, putting a limit on buying soda in order to thin out an obese New York populace.  Michelle “The Lunch Lady” Obama has implemented an Orwellian lunch program to regulate what American children can and cannot eat, and health (for the mother, not for the abortion-targeted baby) mandates are being shoved down citizens’ throats despite how deeply they offend citizens’ religious convictions.

And it doesn’t stop there.  As if forcing you to pay for abortions weren’t enough, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius blatantly ignored — and arrogantly violated — federal law by using her Cabinet position to tell Americans to vote for President Obama.

Where are the outraged media elites?  Where’s the lone, masked hero who fights against those who abuse their power?  As you’ve heard, time and time again, this election is one of the most important elections of our life time.  We cannot allow our government to keep implementing laws that go against “we the people.”

Americans, listen up!  If you want a government that will cater to your every need, you’re living in the wrong country.  This country — the one built on freedom and liberty, bought by the blood and sweat of our ancestors, and lusted after by the rest of the world — is not a country of equal handouts, but of equal opportunity to work hard to achieve our ambitions.  Yet, that is not what we are seeing.  Instead, we have an administration that has implemented more federal control over American citizens’ everyday lives, and what are Americans doing about it?  Nothing!

It’s the American citizens’ choice, but I urge you to take a good, hard look.  It’s time to bring our country back to its founding.  Ben Franklin once said, “It is a republic, if we can keep it.”  So, I ask, can we?

Concerned Women for America (CWA) is doing what it takes to keep our government accountable to the taxpayers.  CWA’s She Votes 2012 project is working to make sure Americans are registered to vote in this extremely important election.  Are you ready?  Are you registered?  With voter registration ending on October 8 in most states, now is not the time to idly wonder.  Click here now to see if you’re registered. … And if you aren’t, stay on the site and do something about it.

Millions of American girls dream of going to college. And now-a-days, that dream is a reality for the 15 million women in college. However, the cost of college has increased by thousands of dollars each year, and as women outnumber men in college, they are feeling the brunt of these tuition hikes.

President Obama’s “student loan relief” plan promised hope, but it’s turned out to be an election-year mirage that doesn’t even attempt to tackle the real problem of soaring tuition costs, not to mention helping the millions of recent graduates who are unable to find work in the dismal economy of the last four years.

Instead of President Obama’s current policies — we need sound, free-market solutions that will create jobs for college graduates and lower the cost of college for women and men.

Share this infographic if you want to see America’s college graduates find good-paying jobs when they graduate! (For a full-size image, click the one above.)

Good news!  Obama isn’t out to kill grandma after all.  He’s just threatening to hold up her social security check. … which would mean she can’t buy groceries. … which means she’d go hungry. … and grow weak. … and … and … OH MY WORD!!  Obama is trying to kill grandma — again!!!

[Insert collective sigh here.]  Seriously?  Obama is threatening to hold up seniors’ August retirement checks?  What a piece of work.  That he’s seriously going to give grandma the shake down (or at least shake her up) in order to try and force the GOP to go his way on the budget is sad, indeed, especially when one of the ways he can save money is by cutting his pet project, Planned Parenthood. 

But let’s be honest, grandma’s a better target.  She’s the classic sympathy picture — old, living on a fixed income, and needing our help.  She’s dependent on us, and if we don’t come to her aid, she’ll die.  The president’s just in an awful predicament.  Naturally, he doesn’t want to do it.  No.  Not at all.  It’s not his fault.  It’s the big, bad GOP that wants to cut and cap spending and balance the budget.  Darn those Republicans. 

And it’s not like the president can cut funding for abortions or anything.  I mean, why rile up the feminists?  Mercy no.  We’re not that far gone yet.  Better to target grandma, for pity’s sake.  The young, virile, liberal-headed, Obama-voting college sweethearts need access to abortion more than Republican-leaning seniors need food anyway, right? 

Hope and change: In with the new.  Out with the old folks.  Shame on you, Mr. President!

Because the General Services Administration (GSA) keeps track of the government equipment, we know that the Obama Administration almost doubled the number of limousines in the federal fleet over the number during the Bush Administration’s final year (412 in 2010 compared to 238 in 2008). According to various news sources, most of the increase occurred immediately after President Obama took office and his first year, during 2009.  For instance, Vice President Joe Biden gave up his daily train commute to enjoy door to door limo service to and from the West Wing of the White House.

I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that political appointees — who used to be considered public servants — want celebrity treatment complete with limo and driver, but during a time of fiscal crisis it seems inappropriate for the federal budget to include payment for a 73 percent increase in limos to transport White House Czars and other administration or foreign dignitaries around town. In fact, the majority of the limos belong to the State Department for their bigwigs and special diplomatic guests. Each extravagant limo comes with a price tag of over $60,000 for a total of more than $10 million — and that doesn’t count the extra items like sirens, armor, and the ability to conduct undercover surveillance. There are even specially equipped limousines for countries “where they drive on the other side of the road.”  Not surprisingly, all these behemoths together use “a huge 963,000 gallons of fuel a day” [emphasis mine].

Yet, just before news about the increase in the number of limousines became known, the President had the gall to send out an executive order for agencies to increase the fuel efficiency of the federal fleets. This is yet another example of the prevalent “do as I say, not as I do” attitude of the current administration. 

Like many other justifications for excessive government spending, the administration claims that the limos are needed because of “increased threat to diplomats” and as protection against “high threat environments.” If that is the case, they need to explain why the number of limos for the Department of Homeland Security has decreased.

As complaints about this latest extravagance rolled in, the GSA spokesperson furiously backpedaled by saying that “their figures might not be accurate.”  After all, she added, the term “limousine” is not clearly defined!

Bionics? Nope. Just good common sense and a calculator.

Washington and the nation are abuzz over Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisconsin) plan addressing the fiscal crisis and promising to cut $4.4 trillion in a decade.  The Democrats and President Obama have talked and talked about the crisis, offered to cut “millions of dollars” (a miniscule amount compared to the debt and deficit) and their “solutions” have only made the situation worse.  Now a crisis of Armageddon proportions looms just around the corner.  The nation needs someone to take the risk of providing leadership, and Congressman Ryan is stepping up to the challenge. 

For years, politicians have paid lip service to the fact that something needs to be done — that something has to be done to preempt the crisis.  The President and Congress bloviated about cutting spending, but the most it ever translated to was just slightly trimming the proposed increases being touted as absolutely essential; nobody was ever willing to actually cut the level of out-of-control spending and certainly not come close to touching entitlements.

Congressman Ryan’s plan wondrously changes the debate in profound ways.  The most obvious new aspect of the debate is that the amount of proposed cuts has jumped from a head-fake of mere millions in cuts to an amount in the trillions with the heft to make a real difference.  Ryan’s formal proposal — a budget resolution for 2012 — reduces the deficit by $4.4 trillion in a decade and cuts spending by more than $6 trillion.  The Ryan plan would cut federal spending to 20 percent of the GDP by 2015.  Even with such drastic budget reductions, the federal budget would not be balanced until 2030.

While his critics wail about draconian cuts — they are large, but only because they return us to the level of spending before Obama took office (hardly a conservative level) and drove spending through the roof — Concerned Women for America (CWA) believes that the crisis can be averted only by reigning in the bloated federal government.  We think that the American people are ready to trust politicians who will be honest with them and talk about the situation in realistic terms about what it is going to take for us to avoid complete financial ruin.  We also believe that our elected officials should be willing to do something, rather than burden our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt and destroy the financial future of the nation. 

CWA applauds Congressman Ryan’s efforts as a firm step in the right direction.  As the Congressman noted, “This is not a budget, this is a cause.”  That cause is to get America to confront the fiscal threat facing the nation before it is too late and motivate Congress to act on ways to get the nation back on a secure financial foundation.

The latest Rasmussen poll indicates it is not 1995 all over again and that this time around a solid majority, 58 percent of the American public, prefers a government shutdown over continued business as usual.  Voters are demanding that Congress to do something about the fiscal crisis by cutting the budget, ending out-of-control spending, and reducing the nation’s mountain of debt — even if it means shutting down the government to force the President and Congressional Democrats to “get it” and get on with the business of scaling back government.

• How is it that the average American understands that record spending is unsustainable, but the Democrats do not understand?
• How can business leaders and economists warn against government overspending and speak out vehemently about the current threats and inevitable crisis without the President and the Democrats in Congress hearing their message?
• How can the experts point out that the fiscal crisis is hurting private sector job growth without the President and Democrats facing up to the fact that the stimulus didn’t work and unemployment must be addressed?
• How can millions of Americans lose their jobs and millions lose their homes without the President and the Democrats understanding that they are destroying middle-class America?
• How can the voters in 2010 have sent such a loud and clear message that they will no longer put up with reckless spending without that message being heard on Capitol Hill and in the White House?

This needs to be the year when the federal budget is smaller, not just frozen at last year’s bloated level.  This needs to be the year when last year’s outrageous level of spending gets deflated.  This needs to be year when we stop making larger and larger additions to the national debt and roll back the tide of red ink that gushes and sloshes through the budget projections.  This MUST be the year when we soundly reject the foolish notion that it is okay to spend more money than we have.

As Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said, “When you add it all up, the [national debt] numbers are staggering.”

As House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “We’re broke!”

And just as Maggie Thatcher warned about socialism: We’ve reached the point where we’ve “run out of other people’s money.”

Liberals are the self-proclaimed champions of social justice and redistribution of wealth in the name of fairness and equality.  But is their ideology consistent with their lifestyle?

Last September, Roll Call released a list of the 50 richest members of Congress.  Lo and behold, the top ten members on the list were all liberals!  In fact, Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) tops the list.  How could this be?  The advocates of the working class?  I don’t think so.

Conservatives are lambasted as being the rich and entitled and are guilted into describing themselves as “compassionate” conservatives just to emphasize the fact that they are not out of touch with the middle and lower classes.

There is obviously a mischaracterization of conservatives and what motivates the policies they promote.  For instance, conservatives don’t advocate free health care for all.  However, the reasoning behind that doesn’t come from a desire to withhold care from those who need it, but from a desire to avoid low quality of care and rationing of care for all.  And these things are inevitable with “free” health care — in fact, they’re a couple of the “hidden costs.”  We’ve already seen evidence of this in the health care systems of Canada and Great Britain.

True conservatives also oppose the welfare system, but not out of a lack of compassion for the underprivileged.  Rather, they are driven to compel people to work hard and reap the financial benefits of that work.  This is the philosophy on which our capitalist society was built.  To promote a society that encourages dependence on the government for income undermines capitalism and demeans the individual.

Liberals consistently paint an image of their congressional opponents as elitist, wealthy, upper-class citizens who are unable to relate to the common American.  It’s sadly ironic to find out that the very members who point fingers at the right wing and characterize them as “entitled” and “out of touch with the American people” are actually the wealthiest and most elite legislators in town.  You will not find a true conservative complaining about anyone’s wealth or saying that someone does not deserve to be as wealthy as they are — or that they’ve probably earned enough.  

Seems to me the liberals paint a false image of themselves while promoting a big government agenda under the guise of helping the average American.  But are they really in touch with the American people?  I think it’s entirely unfair that they would lie in order to hijack issues like social justice and health care, because it looks to me as if they have a lot less in common with the average American than they’d like you to think.

Although the Washington media elite would like nothing better than to dismiss those who attended this past weekend’s Glenn Beck rally as single issue “racist Tea Party” folks, I think what transpired on Saturday left them smarting and scared to death about November.  Chris Matthews and others tried to marginalize the event in an interview with my good friend Colin Hannah, but Colin got the last laugh when hundreds of thousands of regular, small government, God-fearing folk descended upon Washington, D.C., like a couple from North Carolina who stayed at my own house during the weekend who came specifically for the event.

The Pattons own a dry cleaning business and work hard all week to build their business in a tough economy.  Lord knows they could have used the rest rather than drive six hours each way to Washington to stay just one night.  But they, like most of the others who came to the nation’s capital, desperately wanted their elected officials to hear their angst and to understand the seriousness of the situation.  They came to reaffirm the nation’s fidelity to founding principles, both from fiscal and social issue standpoints. 

The Beck rally was supposedly just about the economy, but the end result was a revival of sorts.  It was regular people joining each other to pay homage to their God and to show love for their country.  All of those ideas work in perfect harmony because it is from this same perspective that our nation was founded by similarly brave men and women. 

I think George Washington summed up the message Saturday when he said in 1789:

The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained. – George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

The vast majority of Americans don’t want their money going to support abortion.  Yet, a just-released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shows that citizens have paid over a billion dollars in federal funds — ahem, their tax money — to six organizations that promote and even commit abortions.  And that was just between the years 2002 and 2009.

How does this happen?  Taxpayers are funding groups like Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Population Council for family planning services under Title X.  Abortion advocates say that tax money is not being used for abortions.  But you and I both know that if you’re paying the rent and utility bills for a Planned Parenthood office and providing the funds for pregnancy testing and “counseling,” you are pretty much subsidizing the other activities in that office. 

Even the groups not directly providing abortions, like the Sexuality Information and Education Council for the United States (SIECUS), serve as recruiters, pointing their clients — our children — directly to the doors of the local abortion clinic.  Advocates for Youth, another beneficiary of federal funds, helps minor girls dodge parental notification and consent requirements to avoid the need for “a riskier procedure to end the pregnancy” and “complications from pregnancy.”

PPFA’s own records show that its affiliates committed 305,000 abortions in 2007 (the last reported year), while they reported a scant 4,912 adoption referrals and 10,914 prenatal clients the same year; family planning indeed!

Wendy Wright, Concerned Women for America’s president, appeared on CBN News this week on this very issue and reminds us of Planned Parenthood’s recent outrages like failure to report suspected sexual abuse of minors:

These groups are being supported by more than just Title X, though.  Our tax money is being misdirected to abortion groups through the Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant to States, Social Services Block Grants, and even Temporary Assistance for Needy Families!  Imagine that, money directed to aid families in need — and there are plenty of those these days — is going to abortion providers!

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) has introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, H.R. 614, which would stop government funding of abortion providers.  This bill doesn’t reduce the money available for genuine family planning services; it simply prohibits government funds from going to abortion providers.  Some of our good friends and heroes support this bill, like Reps. Joseph Pitts (R-Pennsylvania), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington), and Trent Franks (R-Arizona).   It’s time for fiscal responsibility, and ending federal subsidies for the abortion industry is a great place to start.

The latest spending scandal should be a wake up call for the Republican National Committee (RNC).  Why would those in charge of expense reimbursements believe it was appropriate to spend nearly $2,000 on such an outrageous and offensive venue?  If the RNC wants to represent conservatives and the Republican Party, then they have to act like conservatives — in a moral, fiscal, and ethical manner. 

When RNC officials seem to think it wise to spend a grandmother’s monthly donation on wooing the younger generation by taking them to a bondage-themed sex club instead of helping to elect a conservative, a real problem exists. 

It’s time for the frat boy mentality in Washington to cease, whether it be Mark Foley, Eric Massa, or the woman staffer who was responsible for this episode; whether it be the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee.  It’s offensive when leaders of both parties engage in juvenile and irresponsible behavior and bill it to taxpayers or donors.