Former congressional candidate Martha Zoller devised a three-step plan to improve government efficiency called Martha’s Action Plan For Prosperity (MAP).

MAP outlines three main factors as necessary components of functional government. These principles include accountability, reform, and citizen engagement. The plan proposes to implement new policies such term limits for members of congress and federal bureaucrats and tax reform.

MAP would also repeal Obamacare.

Zoller encourages strong citizen involvement and advises citizens to participate in weekly town meetings.

She also hopes to restore Christian values within the federal system.

http://marthaforcongress.com/wp-content/uploads/MAP_for_Prosperity.pdf

Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard, gives us more on this story:

If the Feds were a company , they’d be bankrupt. It starts with the Stimulus bill.  It was supposed to be a one time spending of more than $800 billion dollars.  But have you seen that money go away.  The deficits remain at record levels but we are spending that money every year.  In actuality it’s been more than $3.2 billion and no signs of actual cuts.  We ought to start with “zeroing out” that money in perpetuity.    In addition, the President keeps playing a shell game by re spending savings from Iraq and Afghanistan and calling them cuts—this balance sheet would never make it in the real world.

Halper writes, “According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he’ll now make $231,900 per year.

Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase.”

Call or write your congressman.  I’ve already written mine.  Tell them to vote to rescind this order or to make a movement to give all this money to charity.  If you look at the lists of employees getting raises, it’s mostly the political appointee class of workers with in the federal government.  So Obama is taking care of his friends, while throwing in an increase for the electeds in the House and Senate, including Republicans, so he can hang them on this.

Halper goes on to report and update the story:

A new executive order has been issued providing for a new pay schedule beginning ‘on the first day of the first applicable pay period beginning after March 27, 2013,’” reports FedSmith.com. “The pay raise will generally be about 1/2 of 1%.”

Jeryl Bier points to an example of the pay increase for average government executives:

“Not much of an increase, but an increase all the same,” Bier notes.

And the timing isn’t great either: Just as President Obama and Congress try to avert going over the “fiscal cliff,” he doles out pay increases to federal workers.

UPDATE: According to a senior Republican congressional aide who has reviewed the executive order and consulted with the Congressional Budget Office, Obama’s pay raise will cost $11 billion. “The CBO told us that the President’s pay raise for federal workers will cost $11 billion over ten years,” says the aide.

The aide explains, “On the cost-estimate, CBO says the (discretionary) cost of the .5% pay-hike the President is calling for in the Exec Order – relative to a freeze – is about $500m in FY 2013 and $11 billion over the ten years from FY 13 – FY 22.  The reason why the FY ’13 savings is only $500 million is because the pay hike as proposed by the President’s Exec Order would not go into effect until April 1^st, 2013 – when the current CR expires. So it only covers half the fiscal year. The annualized cost of the pay hike is about $1 billion/year.”

Folks, this is real money.  I campaigned on the MAP for Prosperity, and one of the planks was that if Congress didn’t balance a budget, they ought to get a 15% pay cut.  I stand by that today.

He’s saving money for his first house and paying off his student loans.  My middle son, saved money through college, bought a condo and paid it off in 3 years.  My youngest son is applying for medical school and he and his pharmacist fiance will be getting married in 2013 and paying their own way. My daughter is 21 and a theater major.  She’s got dreams of going to NYC and making a go of it.  She’s in school, working almost full-time and saving so she’ll have a cushion when she gets there.  We’ve raised our kids to be self-reliant.  Even though my husband and I are still behind the “8 ball” compared to 2008, we’ve saved and sacrificed so they could have a better life.  We are not the 1%, but hope to be.  We both came from modest means and have built on that.  My husband is a primary care physician and has touched every dollar he’s made.

I’m embarrassed that these men and women that I hoped to join their ranks can’t sit around a table and work things. out.  President Obama promised to televise all negotiations for Obamacare and the Fiscal Cliff and he hasn’t done it.  We need to shine a light on this ridiculous behavior, hold the “electeds” accountable and get back on track. In the MAP for Prosperity from my campaign for Congress, I lay out how we need to do this.  I didn’t win my congressional seat, but I’m not backing away from these ideas. They are still the right way to go.

Going over the cliff might be a good thing, but it will be bad for the economy.  Get to the table, tell the truth and do what you were elected to do.  Defend the Constitution and manage the country’s resources appropriately.

I watched a bunch of old movies over Christmas and amazingly, the federal government was talked about as an efficient organization.  I can’t remember a time when that was so.  We can do it, we are Americans.

Take a look at the MAP, call your Congressmen.  If you have a new one, then hold them accountable. We are Americans, we can do it.

As more than 10,000 participants gather at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Feb. 9-11 in Washington, D.C. to visit with many different leaders of the conservative movement from around the country, they will hear discussed all the controversial issues of the day and, equally important, they will be presented with many ways and means to unite against the incumbent president.

Those who come to CPAC regularly told us they expect the gathering of some of the conservative movement’s most energized activists to be one where the party’s fissures are exposed and discussed, as well as one where the scope of the challenge and the big tasks ahead in the presidential and congressional election year are sorted out and calls to action heard loud and clear.

“We face the morality of Chicago, the self-interest of greed and the power of incumbency,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told HUMAN EVENTS. He said that he expected CPAC attendees to be optimistic “with an understanding that the other team is very serious about holding onto power.”

CPAC will be the launching pad for the conservative movement’s 2012 campaign efforts, just as President Obama’s State of the Union address last month kicked off his 2012 campaign, said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which has long sponsored the annual CPAC.

It will be “ground zero” for the fight for the Republican nomination, said Cardenas, who predicted, “there will be fireworks and that is what makes CPAC exciting.

Among the scheduled speakers: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and current and former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Herman Cain.

Differences from 2008

Notably, much has changed from CPAC of four years ago, the last time a presidential election was in full swing. At CPAC 2008, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he was suspending his campaign for President. At that time, many conservatives saw him as an imperfect, but acceptable alternative for a movement in which many were opposed to Romney’s rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Today, President Barack Obama’s election and policies have galvanized conservatives against Obama and his agenda. The tea party movement, formed in response to Obama’s policies as well as to some big-government Republican policies of the past decade, propelled Republicans back into relevance during the 2010 midterm elections.

Conservatives and fireworks

The “fireworks,” as Cardenas called it, are likely to come largely from supporters of the various presidential candidates who will flood the hotel handing out material. Also there will be many vocal conservatives frustrated with what they view as various big-spending Republicans in Congress, spotlighting the gap between Tea Partiers and those many call establishment Republicans. Any fireworks would not be unprecedented. In 1975, Ronald Reagan delivered his famous speech at CPAC in which he advocated the politics of “bold” conservatism over that of “pale pastels.”

Craig Shirley, Reagan historian and biographer, reminded us that Reagan attended CPAC every year from 1973 to 1988—with the exception of 1976 and 1980, when he was campaigning—“because he liked conservatives and conservatism.” But, Nelson Rockefeller and Gerald Ford never attended CPAC .

What tea partiers are saying

Steve Bannon, who has made many influential films chronicling tea party conservatives, will be premiering at CPAC a movie about conservatives that features stalwarts like radio talk show host Mark Levin and columnist Michelle Malkin. He said conservatives should play “hard to get” and reject any call for unity unless “we make a deal where the conservative voice is guaranteed to be heard,” such as in platforms and policies that the eventual nominee will have to enforce. Teri Christoph, co-founder of Smart Girl Politics, which has organized conservative women around the country, told HUMAN EVENTS that much tension between the establishment and the grassroots stems from the fact that the “establishment types” have been around for many election cycles and “might be less likely to think that big changes can be made” while the “tea party types are newer to politics and activism, and they are not willing to accept the idea that things can’t be changed, and they want that change right now.”

“[The members of the establishment] have to stop thinking of tea party conservatives as a temporary phenomenon,” Christoph said.

Rachel Swaffer, a Ron Paul supporter from Hillsdale College that annually treks to CPAC, told HUMAN EVENTS that she was frustrated with the Republican Party because it “alternates between ignoring and disparaging the libertarian movement” and that CPAC “lends legitimacy to the growing libertarian, small government movement.”

Building bridges at CPAC

Ed Allie, a conservative from Massachusetts who supports Mitt Romney and will be attending CPAC, told HUMAN EVENTS that the party establishment “needs to recognize the “fresh blood” that the tea party brings to the table in enthusiasm and ideas” but that the “tea party needs to recognize that some level of compromise is necessary” while “both groups need to realize they are more powerful and effective together than either is apart.”

Allie, Christoph, and Swaffer all agreed that CPAC would present many opportunities and events for conservatives of all stripes to start building bridges.

“CPAC really does provide a great service to the conservative movement by bringing together the old and new guards,” Christoph said.

It is perhaps fitting then that Palin is delivering the closing address to CPAC this year for she has been such a fierce critic of Obama.

Palin also has repeatedly has said that any of the Republican candidates would be better compared with Obama. So Palin’s voice, as Bannon noted, may be important in the long run, as a reminder that conservatism is not associated with one person, and that may be the ultimate bridge that links the grassroots and the establishment in opposition against Obama in the fall.

In the end, Norquist predicted that the opposition against Obama would unite all. “As each CPAC activist leaves the hotel Sunday morning, American Conservative Union staffers will whisper ‘Obama, stimulus, government takeover of your healthcare’ in their ear,” Norquist jokingly said. “That will unite us.”

Tony Lee edits The Chase 2012 section and writes on politics and culture for HUMAN EVENTS. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. E-mail: ALEE (at) EaglePub.com

Jarrett Stepman is a staff writer at Human Events and a contributor to The Chase 2012 section. He is a graduate of UC Davis, where he studied Political Science.  Follow Jarrett on Twitter.  JStepman@eaglepub.com

In separate interviews with HUMAN EVENTS, Republican Representatives Diane Black (Tenn.), Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.) and Renee Ellmers (N.C.)—all of whom were nurses and health care professionals—blasted White House Press Secretary Jay Carney for this claim he made on June 9:  “I think we’ve made clear what the President’s plan on Medicare reform is.”

In responding to a question from HUMAN EVENTS as to whether the President has offered a plan to reform Medicare, Carney said, “It’s part of his proposal for his 10- to 12-year budget-deficit-reduction plan of $4 trillion.  So we have—there are reforms to entitlements, including Medicare, in the Affordable Care Act.  There are more reforms that strengthen and improve Medicare in a proposal he’s put forward for his long-term deficit-reduction plan.”

The three nurses who are now Republican House Members hit this hard.

“I can’t believe [Carney] could say that,” Buerkle told us.  “The budget that the President proposed and that he is talking about was rejected 97 to 0 by the Senate.  The Affordable Health Care Act would eventually take $500 billion out of Medicare.  What he’s talking about is not a plan at all.”

North Carolina’s Ellmers strongly seconded this view.  Speaking as a nurse and the wife of a surgeon, the Tarheel State lawmaker told us:  “I’m still shocked that the President would continue to stand by his health care plan that the independent Congressional Research Service has shown would bankrupt Medicare by 2024.  The President says that the only way to fix Medicare is to take away $500 billion from the program in order to pay for his government takeover of the health care industry.

Both Buerkle and Ellmers warned that under the Affordable Health Care Act, there would be a fifteen-member panel of government officials who would oversee health care.  In Ellmers’ words, “Unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats [would have] the power to choose who will get health care and who will not.  I’ve seen firsthand the problems facing doctors, patients and seniors and am dismayed to think that our President would continue to allow an important program like Medicare to go bankrupt by 2024 in order to mandate his own healthcare program.”

Tennessee’s Black, who had been a nurse for nearly 40 years before her election to Congress last fall from the district once held by Al Gore and his father, told us, “I don’t consider this much of a plan.  In fact, the Medicare changes in the health care law and the President’s recent doubling down on IPAB [Independent Payment Advisory Board] doesn’t save Medicare for future generations at all.  We’re still facing a system that will go bankrupt within a decade unless something is done to save it.”

Like her fellow nurses in Congress, Black took the opportunity in responding to Carney to again voice support for the Republican alternative plan on Medicare.

“I voted for the Path to Prosperity,” she told us, “because it is the only plan out there that will provide real choice and save Medicare for the next generation.”

John Gizzi, HumanEvents.com