Throw the challenge flag

Time out Nancy, Harry, and Barack. Go to your rooms. Now think hard about paying for your past excesses. Don't come back out until you've come up with a plan for a solution. And don't even think about buying more goodies for your friends.

It is not just Prime Minister Limbaugh and other conservative commentators who are critical of the Democrats' pork filled "stimulus" bill. The Chinese are starting to balk at buying our debt, and now the international community has checked in from Davos (this from Charlie Sykes).

The rest of the world is starting to wonder. Interesting that the Times didn't run stories like this BEFORE the House vote.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Even as Congress looks for ways to expand President Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package, the rest of the world is wondering how Washington will pay for it all.

Few people attending the World Economic Forum question the need to kick-start America’s economy, the world’s largest, with a package that could reach $1 trillion over two years. But the long-term fallout from increased borrowing by the federal government, and its potential to drive up inflation and interest rates around the world, seems to getting more attention here than in Washington.

As someone who is more conservative with my finances that I am politically (yes, really), this troubles me. I intend to leave my children and grandchildren with some sort of nest egg, even if this means working until I die.

But our national leaders have no sense of fiscal discipline. Here we are in a time when federal and state budgets are grossly out of balance and we also owe massive debt. Yet, instead of reducing expenditures and raising revenues to pay off old bills, they have gone on a wild new spending spree.

The Republicans are not much better. Although past experience has shown that lower tax rates will increase taxes collected, I think everyone in government needs to step back, get it's own house in order and let the rest of the nation sort itself out.

My real issue with the current U.S. economy is that a nation cannot pay its way out of debt by creating valueless goods and services. Entrepreneurs should not be rewarded for creating useless stuff like Starbucks, subprime mortgages, web ads and "alternative" energy. Likewise, government should not be throwing money to promote these products; or at arts giveaways, condoms, and other unneeded pork.

We need to get back to producing good and services that are of value and that are in demand by other nations. To achieve this, the following will help.

• Develop, utilize and export the vast natural resources of the United States.
• Take the onerous restrictions off of U.S. manufacturing. Tightening environmental restrictions on U.S. industry results in an overall dirtier planet. The Obama administration's Out of sight, out of mind environmental policies are a planetary disaster.
• Stop wasting grain to make inferior biofuels for U.S. consumption and export this grain as food instead. Food is more valuable than fuel.
  
• Greenhouse gases - don't make me laugh.
  

We can't spend, tax or regulate our way out of this financial mess. We need to innovate and produce more to become more prosperous. Only this will solve our underlying fiscal problems.