U.S. Sen. Jim Risch hoisted a tall stack of paper onto the podium in the state Senate as he wrapped up his address to lawmakers this morning. "This is the original health care bill - it's about 3,000 pages," he told the Senate. "There's no person in America, no person in America that knows what would happen if this bill passed."  Risch bemoaned the level of spending by the federal government, and said,"No nation has ever survived, and no economy has ever survived, where the national debt hit 90 percent of the GDP. We will hit 90 percent ... within the next few years." He said that doesn't necessarily mean America will collapse; "I happen to believe in American exceptionalism," he said. "But can we survive that? I don't know. ... The national debt is skyrocketing. It is a very serious matter."

After his talk, he said his main message to lawmakers about the nation's capital is "first of all, there's nobody in charge, and that's probably pretty obvious to most everyone. They just move from crisis to crisis, and there's no grand scheme like there is here." Risch, a longtime state senator, said Idaho determines its available revenue, then budgets to that. "There you just go in and start spending money - it's breathtaking to see the way they spend money back there. It's disheartening to say the least. But the good thing is people are starting to come to their senses."