If there’s one thing that unites Democrats and Republicans in DC, it’s their unwillingness to tackle the national debt. During campaign season, both parties talk about it. They both point to the other’s policies and offer token solutions to address it, but these solutions never see the light of day. They always punt.

The GOP, when they had the House, Senate, and White House in their control, had decided to punt until next year. That was October, 2017. We’ve heard this line before. It’s always going to happen, just never in the current year. How many times will people allow them to say it without actually doing it?

We need to address the national debt immediately. That means dramatically cutting spending by eliminating programs, agencies, and even entire departments. By “eliminating,” that doesn’t mean make some cuts nor does it mean we move things around. To eliminate something means it needs to be abolished.

I’ll be called cold-hearted for suggesting such things. Is it hard to kill an agency that employs 50,000 people? Yes. Is it harsh to force those 50,000 Americans to seek other government jobs or hit the private sector? Yes. I wish it never came to this. I wish the expansion of Washington DC never happened in the first place, but it did and now it must be dealt with even if hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans will be affected. That’s how precarious our situation is.

What about entitlements? Talking about cutting entitlements is the death knell for politicians. That’s why it never happens. They understand with 100% clarity that entitlements are unsustainable and grow harder to address with ever passing year, yet they punt. Why? Because they’re more concerned about retaining power than helping the nation.

What politicians only mention during campaign season is true year-round. The longer we wait to tackle the debt, the harder it’s going to be. Interest alone is killing us. We used to be able to say that if we don’t tackle it soon, future generations will be in deep trouble. Today, that phrase has been replaced:

If we don’t tackle the debt immediately, we’re dooming not just future generations but our own as well.

Every punt makes the problem harder to tackle. On top of real tax reform, we need to cut spending dramatically. It will hurt in the short term which is why every Congress is so afraid to do it. They know that spending cuts are unpopular come election time. Instead of perpetuating the unsustainable path we’re on, they need to take the bad news to the nation and educate the people on the imperative of tackling the debt immediately.

The problem isn’t really with the politicians, though. The bigger problem is with the voters. Most have no idea how bad the situation is. Trillions versus billions versus millions often doesn’t compute properly, and as long as the debt isn’t visible in their own lives, what difference does it really make? Others are aware of the problem but choose to ignore it because winning today is apparently more important that fixing such a huge problem and losing as a result.

We need a 30-year-plan for reducing the debt. Anyone who says it can’t take that long doesn’t realize it must take that long. The debt is too big to try to fit into a decade. Yet so few politicians talk about it.

This is just another reason we need the American Conservative Movement.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Senator Bernie Sanders is detached from reality. I didn’t realize it until today when I learned he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that a lot of people would be “delighted” to pay more in taxes if it meant free healthcare.

Here’s the full quote:

“Yeah, but I suspect that a lot of people in the country would be delighted to pay more in taxes if they had comprehensive health care as a human right. I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border. You go to the doctor any time you want. You don’t take out your wallet. You have heart surgery, you have a heart transplant and you come out of the hospital and it costs you nothing.”

Let’s break that down. Bear with me, as there’s a lot to cover.

First, no human alive, regardless of how they feel about government programs, is delighted when forced to pay more in taxes. Nobody gets their tax bill and says, “Oh, my lucky stars! I got to pay more taxes than I did before. This is wonderful! I’m delighted!”

Next, we get to the qualifying caveat, “if they had comprehensive health care as a human right.”

As caveats go, it’s one that can seem appealing on the surface. It has the two important phrases used by progressives across the board now: “comprehensive health care” and “human right.” There has been an indoctrination that has spread throughout a large portion of the population from progressives to moderates to conservatives. This indoctrination has made people believe they do not have comprehensive health care and it’s somehow their right to have it as a human.

Today, we have that right. Whether through the state, their employer, or paying as an individual, every American has access to comprehensive health care. It is too expensive for some, but again the state has inserted itself into the equation already with Obamacare. The horror stories of people losing their access to health care are overblown and oftentimes demonstrably false.

As far as it all being a right, that’s debatable. Many conservatives like to point out it’s a commodity and that emergency care is already guaranteed to everyone. But I do not believe that’s the right approach to argue against the current push for programs like Medicare-for-All. Those who choose to not pay for their health coverage and who refuse to go through the steps to get their health coverage given to them by the state are making a concerted effort to deny their own access to health insurance. It’s not something we go out and buy on a whim, so labeling it as a commodity is misleading. It is a commodity by definition, but as we try to win the narrative battle, ignoring the inherent differences between health coverage and gold or orange juice is a mistake.

Rather than view it as a right, it should be viewed as a privilege made available in varying degrees to every American, even those who cannot afford to pay for it. That just makes more sense in winning hearts and minds than calling it a commodity.

Now, we get to the juicy fallacies in the Senator’s argument. He lives close to Canada. Great! That means he likely gets to see Canadians in his neck of the woods coming to America to have procedures done. Why? Because of the demonstrably false claim that “you go to the doctor any time you want.” No, Senator. They don’t. They are extremely limited in when they can go to the doctor, how much time they can spend with their doctor, and what their doctor can offer them at that moment. They don’t have the same luxury we have of wanting to have procedures like elective knee surgery without being forced to suffer through the pain for months or years before they can get on the operating table.

That’s one reason so many from Canada, the United Kingdom, and other “single-payer utopias” are coming here. They don’t want to wait. The other reason is they’re learning the quality of care is deteriorating as it is wont to do whenever government pushes aside the free market to make everything they touch mediocre.

The last part is the one that would make most conservatives chuckle if we weren’t so worried about it becoming a reality. He said Americans would get all sorts of health care from checkups to major operations and it wouldn’t cost us anything. Actually, Senator, that’s not true. It would cost us everything.

What Bernie Sanders fails to realize is his plans would reduce quality of care, increase overall costs through taxation, and drive our problematic healthcare system to the edge of collapse. Then again, maybe he does realize this.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Diodes are important components of most electrical devices we use today. The demand for inexpensive and reliable diodes has made them a hot commodity in China. But were the diodes in our devices created through slave labor? A newly surfaced undercover video shows how this may be possible.

China is well known for using forced, low-wage, or even slave labor in order to produce the massive amounts of products they provide to the world. They have the manpower and the infrastructure but in order to keep their prices low enough to entice the world, they cannot pay a proper wage to those performing the manual labor to produce many things. Straightening diodes is one of the most tedious jobs necessary, making it a prime candidate for the Chinese to indulge in slave labor for their production.

Gina Shakespeare at The Epoch Times explored this new video and detailed how the Chinese government is engaged in slave labor to produce diodes for the world. It’s time to find new economic partners.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.