Although it's easy to get down about the state of things, especially our government, along comes a poll that gives you at least a little faith in the common sense of average Americans.

Via Rasmussen:

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of voters nationwide say it’s at least
somewhat likely that the health care reform legislation working its way
through Congress will cost more than projected. A new Rasmussen Reports
national telephone survey finds that just 14% believe the costs are not
likely to exceed projections.

Eighty-one percent (81%) also think passage of the legislation is at least somewhat likely to lead to higher middle-class taxes.

The survey finds that 68% believe the legislation will
increase the federal budget deficit. Only 11% say the program will
achieve its stated goal of deficit reduction.

Ronald Reagan once said that a government program was the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth.  You could probably add "eternal growth" to that as well.

Before the debate over health care reform really got started, President Obama said that the final result of reform should NOT increase the deficit (and debt).   In fact, he said he would not sign a bill that added "one dime" to the deficit.

Well, we're about to find out how serious that promise was, because it turns out that the calculator at the Congressional Budget Office doesn't work so well.  In its first look at the Senate version of the bill, the CBO showed a savings, leading Obama was able to take to the stage and declare "mission accomplished", saying:

"This bill with strengthen Medicare and extend the life of the program.
Because it’s paid for and gets rid of waste and inefficiency in our
health care system this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in
over a decade. In fact, we just learned from the Congressional Budget
Office that this bill will reduce our deficit by $132 billion over the
first decade of the program, and more than one trillion dollars in the
decade after that."

But it turns out that it's easy to show a bill costs less than it really does if you count the "savings" twice.  Which is what the CBO just admitted that it did in its analysis of the bill.

The result?  A 170 BILLION dollar hole in the deficit.

The Democrats gave yet another unwanted Christmas present to America's future generations this past weekend as they voted for a monstrous pork-filled Omnibus spending bill (omnibus or consolidated because the Democrats could not get their work done this year by passing the required 12 separate spending bills to keep the government functioning.)   

Incredibly, 3 Republicans joined virtually all the Democrats in voting for this $1.1 TRILLION bill loaded with thousands of pork-projects glommed on to the legislation.  The three Republican Senators who voted for this irresponsible spending bill were Susan Collins from Maine; Thad Cochran and Richard Shelby (up for reelection next year) from the very conservative states of Mississippi and Alabama respectively.  If these three Republican Senators had voted no on the "breaking the Republican filibuster vote," the Democrats would not have been able to even vote on this abominable bill.  

The $1.1 trillion bill is now part of the Democrats' whopping $3.6 trillion annual budget for Fiscal Year 2010 and the president is expected to sign it into law.  The Democrats, contrary to their promises (and the president's campaign promises), increased federal spending by a crushing 12%, by far, the largest increase in many years.  

The Christian Coalition of America will be rewarding those 28 Democrats  --  who joined every single Republican in the House of Representatives voting yesterday  --  with a positive score in its next Christian Coalition of America Congressional Scorecard regarding the bloated and pork-filled Omnibus money bill the House Democrats passed by a margin of 221-202 (with one Democrat voting president, ala state senator Barack Obama who voted present numerous times worried about his political viability if he took a position on many issues; 7 Democrats and 3 Republicans did not vote.) 

Voting for this gigantic spending bill is an absolute disgrace besides the fact that provisions in the bill attack the American family and our culture.  The official name of the bill is the "Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY 2010," H.R. 3288.  The reason the Democrats call it a "consolidated" spending bill or an "omnibus" spending bill is that they could not get their job done, as they promised they would, repeatedly, during the 2006 and 2008 campaigns.  They got only 5 of the 12 spending bills signed into law this year, a record worse than most Republican Congresses.   

After almost a year of big, new spending proposals - to say nothing of the tab that will come along with government run health care - the White House is signaling that this year's one and a half trillion dollar deficit might be a political problem that needs to be dealt with after all. 

It's a good bet that what this really represents is their recognition of what's happening in elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York - and their trying to inoculate themselves against similar political damage in the future.

From the Washington Times... 

Anxiety about the deficit has fueled the anger of the conservative "tea party" activists, riled by government spending and debt, and it has seeded reservations about the long-term price tags of signature items on the president's agenda...

A speech last week by Christina D. Romer, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, looked at the reasons for the deficit and at how it relates to health care reform. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to make clear that the administration recognizes the deficit is growing too large.

"Well, it's going to have to come down. Now it's too high, and I think everybody understands this," Mr. Geithner said. "The president's very committed to bring down these deficits."

As if Barack Obama's trillion stimulus legislation (which includes interest on the $787 billion final bill) was not enough, Americans found out today that the Democrats' health care legislation  --  which greatly increases government intrusion into Americans' health care  --  will cost American taxpayers another trillion dollars during the next 10 years if it is passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress this year.  This is what the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the Kennedy/Obama health reform bill will cost in a letter to Senator Ted Kennedy today.  

These two one-trillion dollar Obama programs are on top of the nearly 1/2 trillion onnibus bill passed to fund Obama's government until the end of this fiscal year.  Obama's first deficit is estimated by his administration to be $1.8 trillion, but many economists believe it will actually be a gigantic $2 trillion by the end of this fiscal year.  Obama has quadrupled the deficit and quadrupled the debt according to Sean Hannity on his show tonight on the Fox News channel.  

Barack Obama's budget numbers were recently revised and the deficit now is expected by the Obama administration to top an incredible eye-popping $1.8 trillion for 2009.  Some economists actually expect that even this historic deficit total is based on rosy scenarios and will actually top $2 trillion.  This is on top of the sobering news that the deficits over the next decade caused by Obama's budgets will be larger than those created by all the previous 43 presidents combined from George Washington to George W. Bush!  

The Associated Press reported that Obama's government "will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates."   On Fox News' Special Report, it was reported that "The Administration is conceding the economy is not recovering as fast as it would hope and that means these budget deficits, historically large, are probably going to continue for a while.'"  

Obama said yesterday that his nearly trillion dollar (with interest added in) stimulus bill which he signed into law, has already created "or saved" 150,000 jobs.  By using weasel words such as "jobs saved," the Obama administration will be able to use just about any figure they want to pull out of the air, such as "my administration saved or created 10 million jobs during my first 4 years."  

Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with Stanford University's Hoover Institution recently named the unnamed Senate/House compromise "stimulus" bill the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Collins-Snowe-Specter bill. The former three names are the top three leaders of the Democrat Party. The latter three names are those of the Senate's liberal big-spending Republican Senators: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine and Arlen Specter, up for reelection next year, from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Murdock quoted from a Heritage Foundation study which showed that adding the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Collins-Snowe-Specter bill to a realistic budget baseline yields a projected 2010-2017 cumulative budget deficit of a gargantuan $8.4 trillion! This is 2.5 times the size of the irresponsible Bush 43 deficits over the equivalent eight-year time period. Brian Riedl from the Heritage Foundation wrote last Wednesday that "Obama pledged to fix what he considers Republican governing errors, not double down on them."

The American people, within a year or so, undoubtedly will find out that the pork-filled non-stimulus Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Collins-Snowe-Specter bill -- which Obama will sign into law on Tuesday -- will not work. The Japanese found out that after 10 years of churning out spending bills from their legislature to try to emerge from their recession, their economy remained flat.