Free Republic

Establish smart spending habits. Live like you're poor. How do you do that? Drive your cars into the ground, don't eat out very much, avoid expensive and potentially unhealthy processed foods, buy food in bulk, buy just enough clothes to fit your needs, and use public transportation. ... Use credit cards only as a convenience to avoid carrying cash; limit your credit card spending so that you can easily pay off the balance each month. Make every dollar count with your spending, so you can free up money to invest in the future. Get healthy. One of the best things...

Boehner, Pro-Life Advocates Launch Bills to Ban Tax-Funded Abortions Washington, DC -- House Speaker John Boehner and a bipartisan group of pro-life members of Congress held a press conference this morning to launch two bills prohibiting government funding for abortion. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and the Protect Life Act were officially introduced today. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/20/boehner-pro-life-advocates-launch-bills-to-ban-tax-funded-abortions/

As metro Atlanta's temperatures grow colder, the demand for heat is, well, heating up. A day after hundreds of people queued up outside a Marietta community center to apply for assistance with heat and power bills, hopeful applicants began lining up again around midnight, waiting in the sub-freezing temperatures for the doors to open Thursday morning. This time, however, officials let those in line come into the Mansour Center on Roswell Street an hour early at 7:30 and get relief from temperatures that dropped to 27 degrees. “We’re freezing,” said Lecher Eady, a Marietta mother who arrived at midnight seeking...

Two GOP state representatives say they are routinely asked to vote on bills that they haven't had a chance to read, a practice they say they want to stop. Reps. Justin Amash, R-Cascade, and Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, co-sponsored a joint resolution requiring a 72-hour review period before any bill can be put up for a vote. "It happens all the time," said Rep. Dave Agema, R-Grandville, of the policy of quick votes with no time to read the legislation. "Everybody is looking at themselves and thinking, 'What in the world is this?' " The bill requiring a three-day waiting...

Say family does not have insurance to pay cost of precautionary check-upThe family of a 17-year-old Zion teen credited with saving a drowning boy on Monday in Kenosha, Wis., say the good deed has unfairly saddled them with more than $2,000 in medical bills. “He did what the lifeguard should have done — Trevor saved the boy,” Nicole Bollinger said Tuesday of her cousin, Trevor Hall. “Now the hospital phones me this morning to say that they’re sending off the bill for Trevor being taken to hospital as a precaution afterwards.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law one of the more controversial bills from the recent legislative session, one allowing guns to be carried into houses of worship. Jindal's office said Tuesday the governor acted on the bill in the past few days after receiving it June 20. Including the "gun-in-church" bill, House Bill 1272 by Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, Jindal has signed into law 940 of the 1,067 bills the Legislature sent him, vetoed 12, and used his pen to line-item spending measures in four different budget bills.

Illinois Has Stopped Paying Bills Even For Essential Services Vincent Fernando, CFA Jul. 5, 2010, 12:56 AM Image: The White House If California was America's Greece, then Illinois is America's Spain. California's horrid financial situation initially jolted Americans with the notion that a state could fail, and now Illinois is making people realize that California's problems aren't a one-state fluke. New York Times via MSNBC: Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing...

WASHINGTON — Here are the effective dates of major provisions of the health care overhaul legislation approved Sunday: WITHIN A YEAR - Would provide a $250 rebate this year to Medicare prescription drug beneficiaries whose initial benefits run out. 90 days after enactment: - Would provide immediate access to high-risk pools for people with no insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Six months after enactment: - Would bar insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick. - Would bar insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. - Would bar insurers from imposing lifetime caps on coverage. - Would...

The White House declined on Thursday to rule out that President Barack Obama might sign future legislation, such as an immigration reform measure, that has not been put to a recorded yea-or-nay vote in both houses of Congress. CNSNews.com asked White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs about the possibility of the president doing so because of a prospective lawsuit that Landmark Legal Foundation President Mark Levin has prepared to file against the president if he signs a health care bill that has not been passed by a direct recorded yea-or-nay vote in the House of Representatives. The prospective lawsuit argues that...

Cowher to meet with Bills Staff Zorn to be fired

Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit. The House bill mandates, and the Senate bill strongly encourages, businesses to extend health care coverage to all employees. But the bills do not have exemptions to screen out illegal immigrants, who usually obtain jobs by using false identities and are indistinguishable from legal workers.

WASHINGTON — Americans could pay billions of dollars more in new taxes for a few years before they're likely to see significant change in the nation's health care system under legislation that Congress is considering. Some analysts said that's not necessarily bad. Delaying major health care changes until at least 2013, as the pending Senate and House of Representatives bills would do, would give the government sufficient money and time to get things right.

What do they have to hide? Plenty!House Republicans are leading the fight to force congress to put the text of major legislation online for 72 hours before a vote takes place. Here's the latest from Republican Leader John Boehner (OH): [VIDEO AT SITE] In the latest Rasmussen poll on this subject 83% of Americans agree that bills should be posted online and across the country in Town Hall meetings citizens have spoken directly to their representatives demanding that they "READ THE BILL" before voting on it. House Resolution 554 text) would require bills to be posted for 72 hours before...

Marky Mark says HealthCare bills Unconstitutional http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU8cXGpRcw4

Remember when the self-proclaimed most powerful woman in the world, Nancy Pelosi promised the most “honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history." But Pelosi must believe that being honest and open has nothing to do with reading a bill before it is voting. Back in June, Congressional Republicans introduced H. Res 554. The bill's purpose is to amend the Rules of the House of Representatives to require that legislation and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72 hours before consideration by the House, giving the members and the public time to read the bill before it...

Sweeping health care legislation cleared its first hurdles in the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday as Democrats turned back a series of proposed changes by Republicans who attacked it as a threat to Medicare. Yet even as they prevailed on politically charged votes, majority Democrats also tacitly conceded one point—that despite a pledge by President Barack Obama, some seniors who receive coverage from private insurers could lose some of the optional benefits they enjoy.

The Most At-Risk Sports TeamsBy Minyanville In the U.S., love of sport is fanatical. Our major-league obsessions are so intense we often forget that our favorite teams have a purpose higher than winning games: turning a profit. Pro sports franchises are businesses like any other, and sometimes businesses struggle, limp along or die off. What will it take to keep the cowbells ringing in Sacramento? Can hockey survive in the desert? Will small-market football teams have to pack their bags? Minyanville presents sports teams at risk of relocation -- or worse. And with the economy in question, saving them could...

Would Congress ever pass legislation that would allow the executive to determine at its own discretion whether political opponents had crossed the line into domestic terrorists and build camps in which to keep them? Sounds like something out of 20th-century totalitarian systems or dystopian fiction. Mark Tapscott says it’s not fiction , and he warns readers about an effort by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to do just that: Rep. Alcee Hastings - the impeached Florida judge Nancy Pelosi tried to install as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until her own party members rebelled - introduced an amendment to the...

Having lost my job several months ago due to *downsizing*, I'm just wondering if anyone has had any experience with those credit counseling services.I've been using my savings, but this resource is now exhausted. I just got hired by another firm, but I'm a month behind in bills and won't get paid for another month.Anyone know anything useful about credit counselors, or which ones to stay away from?Thanks in advance for those leaving constructive messages!

Mar 30, 2009: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority.The totals were 391 Ayes, 8 Nays, 32 Present/Not Voting.