Time to Get Tough Read Online Free PDF

if you can stomach it. It’s the most ludicrous, anemic leadership anyone could imagine. Think about it. If Obama supports offshore drilling in Brazil, and puts billions of our dollars
in their hands to do it, why can’t we drill in America and create more jobs and less dependence on foreign sources of oil?
    The fact that Obama decided to tap into our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve—a stockpile of 727 million barrels of emergency oil, or thirty-four days’ worth of America’s annual usage—and used up 30 million barrels to lower summertime gas prices so he could goose his sinking approval ratings is a national disgrace. But ironically, his decision only proves what everyone knows: more domestically produced oil on the market will drive down gas prices. Period.
    So let’s drill already. And let’s do it in America. It’s not only economically smart, it’s strategic—the Middle East needs to get the message loud and clear that we’re done coming to them on bended knee. We’re waking up, getting up, and making America the powerhouse we once were.
    Take the oil, sue OPEC, and drill domestically—if we do these three big things, we’ll be on the right track to rebuild American strength, wealth, jobs, and opportunity. Will it be tough? Sure. But that’s what makes us Americans: we do hard things, and we do them well . . . if we have the right leadership.

FIVE
    A GOVERNMENT WE CAN AFFORD
    A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. 1
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—President Gerald Ford
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    E very day, your government takes in $6 billion in revenue and spends $10 billion. That means every day the federal government has to borrow $4 billion more than it has. 2
    To state the obvious, if any business operated the way the government does, it would go under. But in the absurd world of Washington, politicians just kick the can down the road and shrug. There’s just one problem: the can has finally hit a $15 trillion debt wall. For the first time since the founding of the Republic, we’ve lost our AAA credit rating, and now even our enemy China is having second thoughts about lending us money to bankroll Barack Obama’s endless spending spree.

    Americans understand that the U.S. has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In September 2011, Gallup asked Americans how much money they think the federal government wastes. On average, citizens put the figure at 51 cents out of every dollar. That’s probably being too kind.
    We need more grown-ups in Washington, people who will shoot straight and level with the American people about our nation’s top budget busters. The biggest slices of the budgetary pie are eaten up by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Social Security makes up 20 percent of the budget ($707 billion). Medicare and Federal Medicaid account for 22 percent of the budget ($724 billion). As everyone knows, health-care costs are skyrocketing, and Medicaid has massively expanded its role in the health-care system. When Medicaid was created in 1965, only one in fifty citizens used the program. Today, it’s one in six Americans.

Save Social Security and Medicaid
    Social Security faces a similar problem. Soon there will be more people inside the cart than there are pulling the cart. Right now, 53 million people collect Social Security benefits that average $1,067 a month. In seventy-five years, that number will jump to 122 million, roughly one out of every four citizens. 3 That’s why, with 77 million baby boomers set to retire and begin collecting benefits, these two programs—a combined 42 percent of the U.S. budget—are in danger of becoming insolvent. We can’t let that happen.
    Now I know there are some Republicans who would be just fine with allowing these programs to wither and die on the vine. The way they see it, Social