Isn’t that nice? After taking in taxes last year that totaled only $1.78 trillion, the House of Representatives is now considering a budget $630 billion beyond that figure, a 35 percent increase.

In other words, Congress is considering the possibility of running a record deficit that does not include the hundreds of billions they will pilfer from entitlements like Social Security which, if they were honest, would push the actual deficit for 2005 up closer to $800 billion.

Does this make sense to you, especially when this year's tax revenue is not looking any better than last year's? And last year's budget resulted in a $555 billion increase to the national debt, the real deficit.

When your income drops, do you plan to spend even more? The federal government's tax base has been in decline for three years and is caused directly by the loss of jobs in America. The unemployed do not pay taxes and those who have settled for part-time or jobs that pay less are not paying as much as they once did in taxes.

Let's not forget that the Balanced Budget Act that took years of debate to finally pass in November, 1997, and even caused government shut-downs in 1995, picked the year 2003 as the year that the federal government would finally be able to balance its budget. Even in better times, the government put off curtailing wild spending for at least five years waiting for and expecting the American taxpayers to come up with more money to close the gap.

Of course, the answer you will get from Bush & company is that our lives changed forever on 9/11 and we can't afford not to spend this sort of money to increase our surveillance, forego the liberties many have died to protect, and win the war on terrorism.

The strongest military in the world, a military with all of the modern push-button shock-and-awe weapons of mass destruction, requires even greater expenditures to defeat a bunch of terrorists who live in caves, hide out in cities including our own, and are led by a man we haven't been able to locate who must be kept alive on some sort of portable dialysis machine, a man who probably died some time ago but has become a legend like Zorro.

Without mentioning the invasion of the pipsqueak nation of Iraq and the killing fields that have resulted in our occupation, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, economist, or political specialist to see that something besides the budget is out of whack.

More than anything, a growing majority of Americans is beginning to realize deep in pit of their stomachs that we wouldn't be in this mess if we didn't have troops in more than 140 nations of the world protecting our so-called "national interests," acting as self-appointed police, and upsetting people in the same way we would be upset if the Russians or Chinese had a military presence in our own home towns.

Instead, we are about to follow the Israeli policy of making everyone a member of the armed forces (see: HR-163) so that there will no longer be any innocent civilians in America either. We could easily win the war on terrorism by bringing our boys home and trying to find them jobs.

At the very least, we could station them on our borders to stop illegal immigration, guarantee their paychecks, health care, and insurance programs. But even then, it may take years for other countries to forgive us, calm down, and stop seeking revenge for the things we've done to them, including the civilian airliners we've mistakenly shot down, fishing boats we've sunk with nuclear submarines, ski-lifts hotshot pilots knocked down, rapes and other accidents of our boys-will-be-boys non-diplomatic military minds.

Of course, if you believe Condoleezza Rice this will do nothing to stop terrorists who are jealous of our freedoms, social morays, pedophile priests, gangs, mothers who drive their children into lakes, gay marriages, Viagra, outsourcing of jobs, toilets and gas guzzling off-road Hummers or SUVs, many with "Ram" as their motto. All she has to do is to watch the daily news, but it seems Ms. Rice lives in another world, the Bizzaro World or Disney Land of Washington fantasy.

After invading a small defenseless nation that we embargoed for twelve years causing the deaths of a half million children in a UN sponsored food-for-oil program and lying to the American people about "weapons of mass destruction" while completely ignoring UN inspectors that had files on each and every weapon destroyed since 1991—we are now engaged in a quagmire in Iraq and trying to justify our invasion/occupation on some other fanciful grounds besides fear.

By this senseless invasion, we have squandered the 9/11 sympathy and cooperation of the rest of the world and made ourselves feared as the real aggressors, the one country with its fingers on the buttons to unleash the greatest weapons of mass destruction the world has ever seen, and led by a President who wants to develop even more of them.

And if you think that things will be better under a democratic administration—think again. It wasn't the republicans that brought us Waco and the absolute destruction of a religious sect with tanks and helicopters from General Wesley Clark's Fort Hood in direct defiance of Posse Comitatus, the Oklahoma City bombing, or the ensuing cover-ups or lack of investigation.

Basically, you can't trust a government that lies to you about trust and the trust funds they manage. If they can get away with something as obvious as stealing your retirement, health care, and other entitlements you’ve already paid for—they feel that they can get away with anything.

Do you hear John Kerry talking about reform of trust funds? After 19 years as a Senator, on the Senate Finance Committee, the subcommittee on health, and the subcommittee on Social Security and Family Care—John Kerry knows exactly how you've been scammed for years by both parties.

The only truly nonpartisan thing in Washington is cheating you with trust funds that make Enron, WorldCom, and other private corporations look like angels playing in the same sandbox.