I was among the 1.7 million people who walked in the March on DC on 9/12/2009.  It was one of the most memorable days of my life and I will never, ever forget the feeling of walking with my beloved new friends in this movement as we stood up for liberty.

The signs that day were all over the place.  Each sign was a personal passion of the individual carrying it.  We loved reading the signs and some of us wished we had thought of that one or that one.  The air was crisp, the sky was bluer than blue and the wind was perfectly connected with the sun on our backs.  The spirit of our forefathers could be felt all around us and you could almost see them smiling and thankful we were there. 

The t shirts were there too.  T-shirts with names of local tea parties were the largest in number.  Our tea party was represented well and we used the Dartmouth in the middle of the crowd to take photos from high above for the walkers who wanted to capture the moment for their personal scrapbooks. 

One t-shirt stood out to me and I still can see the woman who wore it.  She was about 35 years old, holding the hand of a little girl.  Her shirt said “I see debt people.”  We laughed and again wished we had thought of that saying and vowed to make sign one day with that on it. 

The time is now.

The debt ceiling is a curious thing.  It was instituted to keep Washington from “spending too much money.”  Really?

Here’s what they do.  When they are almost “maxing out our country’s credit card,” they simply raise the debt limit and get more money to spend. 

Have you ever almost maxed out your credit card and picked up the phone to secure more money from your lender?  In the old days it was pretty easy to get more money.  The more you borrowed, the bigger windfall it was for your creditors.  They loved to mail you a big bill every month.  The bigger the bill, the more interest they could charge.  The bigger your debt, the harder it was to pay it off.  It was a vicious cycle until one day you woke up and realized the debt was weighing you down.  You couldn’t handle it anymore.

You went to work.  You began by cutting yourself off from access to more credit.  You looked around the house and began cutting non-essential items like a cell phone for everyone, a thousand channels on your cable bill, turning off the lights when you leave a room, no more eating out, no more expensive vacations, and no more shopping for clothes until that debt was gone.  It was the little things that added up to the big things and one by one you cut out the fluff.

The day you were out of debt was a great day for you and your family.  The release of the debt pressure was gone and you could breathe again.  Life was good and you promised yourself to never get in that situation again.

Why is it so simple to see what needs to be done and the “debt people” in DC can’t see it?

Maybe I’m too simple.  Maybe I don’t have all the facts.  Maybe I should leave the answer to how to run our country to the smarter guys and gals in DC? 

Nah…Forget about it!  The Tea Party Movement knows what is going on and we see the big picture.  We may not have all the facts but we will not be buffaloed again by “the sky is falling” rhetoric anymore.  Our sky fell on us when:

• Our 401(k)s took a beating
• Many of us lost our jobs
• Cost of goods shot up
• Border agents were murdered because of our open borders
• Our economy failed to improve
• Etc Etc Etc

The sky is falling will not work on the American people anymore.  Fool us once, shame on you.  Fool us twice, shame on us.

We do know this.  We sent a message in November and we expect those we elected to take a hard look at our financial situation and get our house in order.  Take some scissors, cut up the credit card and start cutting expenses NOW.    CNNMoney. com posted an article about the debt ceiling.   You can read it here:  http://tinyurl.com/5wpk499 

Notice the last sentence:  “Of course, if it can't borrow, the government will need to raise taxes or cut spending to continue to meet its obligations in full.”

Here’s the EASY answer button from the American people – “cut spending, cut spending, cut spending and keep taxes low.”

If you need more advice, feel free to ask us.  We’re pretty smart out here in America.  We’ve learned to do a lot with a little and you, DC-debt people, need to do the same.