Progress On Repealing Health Care Law     

Last week, the House approved H.R. 1213  by a vote of 238-183.  If also approved by the Senate, the bill would repeal section 1311(a) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  That section provides unlimited funds to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to states for establishing state health insurance exchanges.  The bill would reduce direct spending by an estimated $14.6 billion over the next 10 years.

Our new Michigan Secretary of State recently reported on her first 100 days in office. She and her team spent three and a half months evaluating nearly every aspect of the Department of State operations to determine what practices were effective, what could be improved, and where costs could be cut.  You can view her entire address online, and I've included some highlights here.

According to a 2008 report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the states, Michigan had an impossible 102.54 percent of eligible voters registered to vote in this state. Ruth has already been working diligently to clean our voter rolls and change the laws to keep them that way. She is also working to ensure that all of our votes are able to be recounted: currently some votes are not allowed to be recounted. Finally, she is working with the legislature on a package of bills that will put more teeth into our election laws to go after those who violate our campaign finance requirements. Candidates who don't follow the rules and fake political parties will not be tolerated!

Ruth has already cut $2.1 millions dollars from the department's general fund allocation. She is also instituting cost-cutting innovations with the municipalities. For example, we have now standardized our ballots so that absentee and in-person ballots are the same. Instituting this change in just one county in one election saved them $160,000.

Here's a video that explains our debt problem in great detail.  Use it to educate your friends and family that still don't get just how bad the problem is.  Replay the first minute over and over until they realize just how must money we waste on interest payments!  Oh, and don't forget to tell your Congressman and Senators to just spend less.