Today was the day. The big bill is now on the table. That is, the new $856 billion healthcare bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus.

I know what you must be thinking. We all thought the healthcare bill was going to be a cool $1 trillion, so we’ve already saved $144 billion right off the top.

Go Baucus!

But let’s dig a little deeper.

According to Baucus, the bill will be paid for with $349 billion in new taxes and fees and $507 billion in cuts to government health programs.

So here’s the $64,000 question: If we had $507 billion in expendable healthcare spending, meaning spending that we didn’t need, why don’t we get rid of that spending regardless of whether Obamacare passes or not?

Think about it. Obama has racked up the biggest deficit in recorded U.S. history. His annual deficit should be around $1.8 trillion, and the bailouts have cost as much as the entire GDP of the United States. Why not have a little savings? Why not make a cut somewhere?

I remember in a debate with John McCain during the campaign Obama said that he wasn’t going to put a spending freeze to get the deficit under control but was going to use a scalpel in order to cut spending.

Well, Mr. President, here’s the knife. Cut away.

You have the opportunity to show that you can cut spending without throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into new spending to offset that.

But let’s dig a little deeper.

What Congress is essentially telling us by introducing this bill is that we’ve been overspending by about $507 billion in healthcare. So now to fund our new plan we are going to take the $507 billion of expendable healthcare spending that we’ve already been billing you for and add $349 billion in new taxes.

Does this make sense to anyone?

Also, if we didn’t need to spend that $507 billion, why were we even spending it in the first place?

These are the questions that no one will ask because, quite frankly, they are tough questions.

The mainstream media has not held the Obama administration accountable to his campaign agenda of lowering the deficit and fiscal discipline. What Obama has done is quite the opposite.

What we’ve seen is the biggest spending spree in U.S. history and the sad part is it’s only going to get worse. Fiscal restraint and discipline are nowhere in sight, and the one time that there is a proposed bill to cut spending in a particular area we see that there is $856 billion in new spending to go along with it. Not to mention new taxes on individuals and businesses.

The American taxpayers have had enough. It’s about time that we see some real action in Washington, D.C. We elect leaders to make tough decisions and not to be everyone’s friend.

It’s time that our leaders in Washington, D.C. stop trying to be our friend and start restoring order on Capitol Hill. There is $500 billion that they could give back to the people. In tough economic times, our elected leaders, including our president, could give the taxpayers back $500 billion. That would be a tremendous change.

But that’s not the change they believe in. Washington will continue to tax us more and spend more, regardless of the campaign rhetoric. Why they won’t give taxpayers back the $500 billion may not be such a mystery after all. Maybe it’s just business as usual.

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