Free Republic

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal government’s major health-care programs as well as the Obamacare insurance exchange, spent $1,113,178,000,000 in fiscal 2013, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which was released last week. That sets a record for the most money ever spent by a federal agency or department in a single year. It also means CMS spent more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire federal government spent in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation creating the Medicaid and Medicare programs. …

Politics wasn't invented to be clean, positive and reassuring. It was invented so that one group could beat the holy hell out of another. To do that, they need money. Lots of it. All told, candidates for the presidency have raised more than $1.5 billion since January 2007. This staggering sum is bound to arouse dismay in all high-minded people. And remember, we're not even counting those "independent" advocacy groups that are dredging the swamp for votes. But before we get all moralistic about the state of the union, let's put these numbers in perspective. Americans spend around $8 billion...

Rush was just talking about the RNC Chairman who was interviewed in the Baltimore paper and he has said that the Republican party is no longer for limited government. Now the party will take a poll of what the people want and then will throw money at that special interest. Let's give this guy a poll!!!

So what if there was a recession and a war going on - Congress still squandered a record $20 billion in pork this fiscal year. "Taxpayers will be disappointed," said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. "Here they are, sitting around doing their taxes — a good time to be thinking what they’re getting for their money, and in this case it’s a pretty bad deal." The three fattest hogs at the taxpayers' trough are on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. It looks as if doddering former Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., will have to surrender his "Sen....