In a video appearance before the Western States Transportation Alliance, Congresswoman Betsy Markey “spends the whole beginning of this greeting talking about potential taxes to pay for spending in a surface transportation bill” reports Who Said You Said, which posted the video.

Markey’s implication that taxpayers aren’t sending enough of their money to Washington begs a couple of questions. First, what has Washington been doing with the money it already has? Let me answer that in part.  A new project of mine, Mothers Against Debt (check out MAD on FaceBook too), reported that the Federal Highway Administration gave Arizona $1.25 million to build special squirrel bridges “so they don’t end up on the menu at the road kill cafe.”

Second, the federal government will spend roughly $3.7 trillion this fiscal year. If infrastructure is a proper function of government, why isn’t Washington prioritizing its budget so that infrastructure gets funded appropriately?  Let me answer that one too, because roads and bridges aren’t a priority for those currently in power.

So let’s clarify all this.  Squirrels are a higher priority than drivers and taxpayers. No wonder our children’s national debt is more than $13 trillion.

A new video from Mothers Against Debt (MAD) puts our reckless spending and massive national debt into perspective.  We should be charged with child abuse and crimes against the economy.

Columnist Peggy Noonan is a master of language and understanding human nature.  Her most recent Wall Street Journal column suggests what we, as average taxpaying Americans, would like to hear from those who played roulette with our money and lost big.

“Let’s be real. This is what happened the past 10 years. You, for political reasons, both Republicans and Democrats, finagled the mortgage system so that people who make, like, zero dollars a year were given mortgages for $600,000 houses. You got to run around and crow about how under your watch everyone became a homeowner. You shook down the taxpayer and hoped for the best.

“Democrats did it because they thought it would make everyone Democrats: ‘Look what I give you!’ Republicans did it because they thought it would make everyone Republicans: ‘I’m a homeowner, I’ve got a stake, don’t raise my property taxes, get off my lawn!’ And Wall Street? We went to town, baby. We bundled the mortgages and sold them to fools, or we held them, called them assets, and made believe everyone would pay their mortgage. As if we cared. We invented financial instruments so complicated no one, even the people who sold them, understood what they were.

“You’re finaglers and we’re finaglers. I play for dollars, you play for votes. In our own ways we’re all thieves. We would be called desperadoes if we weren’t so boring, so utterly banal in our soft-jawed, full-jowled selfishness. If there were any justice, we’d be forced to duel, with the peasants of America holding our cloaks. Only we’d both make sure we missed, wouldn’t we?”

Sadly you won’t find that in the official record because it was never spoken. But Noonan is correct it “would be a kind of breathe of fresh air.”   We’ve got a better chance of proving anthropogenic global warming than hearing that kind of raw honesty.

Here’s what we really heard this week when former Citibank CEO Charles Prince testified in front of the Financial Inquiry Commission and explained why we are experiencing the worst economy since the Great Depression. A commissioner asked Prince if he knew why American homeowners experienced a 30 percent decline in property values, Prince responded:

Yes, we haven’t had such a decline “since the Great Depression.” The reason is before the crash there was “a bubble.” There was too much “easy money.” Then the bubble popped.

With that kind of insight, it is no wonder that Citibank was granted $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds.  Meanwhile a beautiful and historic home right next to mine has lost nearly 50 percent of its value.

Just about the time I think pompous members of Congress and other elected officials at the state level have done everything possible to infuriate me, I read something like from the CBS News: “Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket?”  

Fifteen Democrat and six Republican members of Congress, their staff and their families spent hundreds of thousands of our dollars going to Copenhagen, including Colorado’s own Diana DeGette who bragged about her taxpayer-funded, all-expenses-paid “junket” in the Denver Post.  She concluded her second “dispatch” with this observation:

At the time of this writing, the final agreement has not yet been approved. It is almost certain that the final binding deal will not be reached in Copenhagen, but we have every reason to believe that we are moving in the right direction.

Thank goodness they don’t have a “final agreement.” It’s one of the few times, I’ve been thankful that wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars resulted in nothing other than wasted money.

Or I read something like this about our state government: “Go on take a free ride.”  Parole bought more than 60 2009 hybrid sedans in the midst of the “worst recession since the Great Depression.”

Or this: “Road trip to Beaver Run Resort.”  Apparently Colorado spent nearly $300,000 on things like “official functions” and “customer workshops.”

If you really want to get MAD check out the US Debt Clock.

Is anyone really surprised at the anger that launched such movements as Tea Parties and 9.12 Projects or my new group Mothers Against Debt.  Please join MAD.  No dues.  No meetings.  Just a pledge to hold accountable any elected officials who recklessly spend our children’s money pushing them further into debt.  Let me know what you think of the new logo.

Veronisque De Rugy, senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and my newest hero, warns in her latest article, “Starting in 2012, the cost of the debt as a percentage of GDP will explode from a mere 1.8 percent of GDP to more than 30 percent of GDP in 2082.”

She goes on to explain what this means for her daughter Juliette:

To give you an idea of what this means, if I get to retire at 65, in 2035, the cost of debt will have more than tripled from 1.8 to 7.5 percent of GDP. And by the time my daughter Juliette retires, in 2070 (assuming that she is still allowed to retire at 65) the cost of the debt will have reached 23.8 percent.

What does that mean in dollars?

To put these numbers in perspective, Edmund Andrews writes in the New York Times that this means an additional $500 billion a year in interest payments in less than 10 years, which is ‘more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

If you are worried about your child’s future, please get MAD and join Mothers Against Debt.  Be on the lookout for announcement from MAD.

Check out the Big Red Calculator, the only calculator that accommodates trillions and the official calculator of MAD.

I’m MAD — a member of Mothers Against Debt.  I guess that I am more than a member; I’m the founder.  I launched the new group on Saturday during my speech at the 912 rally in Denver.  After reading a WSJ article by John Fund titled “The Deficits Are Coming,” I felt compelled to act to protect my three children.

Fund reports that former head of the General Accounting Office David Walker serves as a modern day Paul Revere.  Walker warns:

Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that’s before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing.

Walker puts the gargantuan number into perspective. 

Our $56 trillion in unfunded obligations amount to $483,000 per household. That’s 10 times the median household income—so it’s as if everyone had a second or third mortgage on a house equal to 10 times their income but no house they can lay claim to.

As for this year’s $1.8 trillion deficit, Walker says, ”a deficit that large is $3.4 million a minute, $200 million an hour, $5 billion a day.”

That’s the inspiration for MAD.   Our mission is to hold accountable any elected official who increases our children’s public debt.  The fiscal enslavement of our children really is taxation without representation. 

No dues.  No meetings.  Just a pledge to hold politicians of all parties accountable and to work against those who spend our tax dollars recklessly.   Hell hath no fury like a Mother scorned.

Check out MAD — Mothers Against Debt– on Facebook.