Republicans like to pride themselves as fiscally conservative. Republican voters appreciate fiscal conservatism; they don't like taxes and want to see the taxes they can't avoid go into programs like Defense, roads, and huge tax giveaways for corporations. You wonder how they ever let George Bush into the party.

See, there's a difference between Republican voters and the Republican politicians they elect. The elected Republicans appeal to their voters by blasting Democrats fortheir tax-and-spend ways, while somehow getting away with something much worse--borrow and spend. The huge national debt that started to grow at a crazy rate under Reagan is now growing at over $500 billion a year. These guys haven't met a tax favor for the rich they didn't like or a new secret intelligence program they wouldn't fund with our children's good credit.

Understand what this debt really means. I mean, you can just print more money, right? Well, no. It means money costs more for borrowers because interest rates go up. It means we can't invest in our schools, roads, electric grid, port security, etc. We can't save Social Security, we can't nurture new small businesses, and we can't give every American access to adequate health care. That's what $500 billion a year buys. So while George Bush and his well-fed cronies in Washington talk about liberals as tax and spend liberals, they are selling us down the river, running the national debt up to its highest levels in history, just 3 short years after we had an annual surplus. That's right, we had a yearly surplus a few years ago and now that's gone.

Now, the economy was slowing regardless of who was president back in 2001(the technology-driven spending of the late 90's was largely due to the Y2k anomaly), but the budget problems were deepened by George's blank check spending habits. $200 billion in Iraq. $1.3 trillion in tax cuts. Recently he unveiled his latest budget, completely ignoring fiscal discipline. The reward of fiscal discipline is a strong economy and a government free from the shackles of debt to invest in sparking the economy. Bush has shown no vision, no creativity, no hope for the American future. He has simply attacked the middle class and middle class values while thumping a Bible on the heads of his "moral" opponents like gays and (gasp) entertainers and (shame) professional athletes and (worse) liberals. Well, I'm a liberal, and I believe in fiscal responsiblity. I believe in investing in our communities. I believe in true freedom--freedom from the government invading your home through the use of the unConstitutional Patriot Act, which completely undermines the Bill of Rights.

This election year is extremely important. America is in a fragile place. We can continue with the failed policies of George Bush, Arlen Specter and the rest of the neo-con lackeys, or we can return to fiscal sanity and our base of democratic principles. Follow Bush into the void where fewer kids get a decent education, fewer Americans have health care, more Americans face foreclosure and bankruptcy, and the government faces financial collapse. Or follow another path--the sane path as led by, oh, I'll say it, Kerry or whoever gets the nomination.

$1.3 billion a day buys a lot of classrooms and new teachers. It invests in a lot of companies looking for renewable energy. Let's fight this year for fiscal sanity and vote these hucksters out of office. Yeah, that's right George, Dick, Don, and Paul. I called you hucksters.