The symptoms are clear. As a medical doctor, I am prepared to diagnose the Obama administration and the majority in this Congress with an addiction to raising taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama budget calls for more than $1.1 trillion in new taxes over the course of the next decade, including $646 billion in new taxes for their Cap and Tax scheme alone. Cap and Tax will raise the average American family's energy costs by more than $3,100 each year. That amounts to the largest tax increase in our nation's history. Cap and Tax is an overdose of new taxes, and mark my words, it will lead to catastrophic consequences. Experts almost unanimously agree that Cap and Tax will destroy millions of jobs and devastate our economy. All this, while having a marginal impact on global emissions.

Make no mistake that no one will be immune from the effects of this legislation. No matter where you live - in a township, in a village, in a metropolitan area, or in the inner city, your family's tax burden will increase by $3,100 every year, and millions of jobs will be lost. Senior citizens, the poor, and the unemployed will be hit the hardest by this tax as experts agree that they spend a greater portion of their income on energy consumption.

And this is just one of many things you have been forced to pay for this year. Hardworking taxpayers are also footing the bill for:

l A trillion-dollar stimulus spending bill that is riddled with waste and inefficiency on projects such as a skateboard park in Rhode Island, a new auxiliary runway at Rep. John Murtha's (D-PA) Airport for No One in Pennsylvania, and checks for the deceased in Maryland.

l A $400-plus billion "omnibus" spending bill loaded with more than 9,000 unscrutinized earmarks.

l A budget that adds a staggering $13 trillion to the debt, doubling our national debt in five years and tripling it in 10 years.

l $50 billion in federal aid for General Motors, which seemed to have only bought a bankruptcy filing.

And it's only June 9. The sad fact is the Administration has added more to the debt than every previous President combined - eclipsing in less than five months what had taken more than 230 years to establish. And now they're calling for the largest tax increase in American history. Enough is enough. I urge the American people to stand up and say no more to these policies and insist that their representatives in this Congress oppose the cap-andtax legislation, and begin returning some fiscal sanity to Washington, D.C.