Free Republic

Ask any budget expert in Washington to explain the ballooning deficit and debt, and Social Security and Medicare will be high on the list of causes. That’s wrong. The real driver, the elephant in the room, is means-tested social-welfare spending—Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold. True, Social Security and Medicare are a drain on general revenue and will become big fiscal problems if not reformed. But they aren’t the major source of our current...

Are greedy corporations to blame for inflation? Ariane Navarro thinks so. She recently pulled up her budgeting spreadsheets from 2021 and was shocked by how much her family's grocery bill has skyrocketed. She's not imagining it: From February 2020 to this July, grocery prices grew a cumulative 25.6%. That's higher than overall inflation, which was 21.6% during that same period. "We have no other choice — we have to buy groceries," says Navarro, who lives in Houston. "That's a basic need. And so [companies] use that to kind of take advantage and keep raising prices." It's a widespread sentiment —...

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s camp is defending a controversial program he created that handed out free wheels to Massachusetts welfare recipients — including state-funded insurance and AAA memberships — even as the plan drew fire from conservatives the former Bay State governor is wooing. “Over 80 percent of participants have moved off of welfare,” said Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho.

If I was younger and still serving I would be honored to have her as my commander in chief. You can keep the phony tough guy men that get trotted out as candidates. I saw REAL leadership up close and I know what it looks like. Sarah Palin has “IT.”