Last week, President sent Congress his final budget. He called it "innovative" because it was dispatched to Congress electronically, saving the American money because the $3.1 trillion budget didn't have to be printed, copied or mailed out.
Despite those savings and cuts in Medicare, Medicade and frozen expenditures in education, it would be hard to claim that the record 2009 budget will have anyone repeating President Bill Clinton's 1996 claim that, "“The era of big government is over.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22990613
The $3.1 trillion proposed budget projects sizable increases in national security but forces the rest of government to pinch pennies. It seeks $196 billion in savings over five years in the government's giant health care programs - Medicare and Medicaid.
But even with those restraints, the budget projects the deficits will soar to near-record levels of $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, driven higher in part by efforts to revive the sagging economy with a $145 billion stimulus package.
So how much is a trillion?
“A million seconds is 13 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years,” (see http://www.tysknews.com/).
or
“Let’s say it’s the year 1, the beginning of the first millennium. You have a trillion dollars to spend–at the rate of one million dollars a day. At just before three years, you’ve reached a billion dollars. So you keep spending. Now you are in the year 2,000. Would you believe you’d still have 737 years to go before you exhaust your trillion dollar pile,” (see http://davidhunnicutt.com/).
$3.1 trillion?
Bush’s conservatism has grown the government at rates not seen since Nixon (another conservative) thirty years ago. Democrats will certainly pass this budget albeit in their own image. Do not look for them to shave any off the total.Big government over? Humorist Will Rogers said “you can always tell when a politician is not telling the truth . . . when they move their lips.”
[Political] talk is not cheap.
2 comments:
Well, we need the budget, though I sure hate to see a $3.1 trillion budget when we're $9+ trillion in debt. As for "big government," when you have a large, post-industrial democracy like the United States, you're going to have a lot more to deal with than, say, the Pitcairn Islands would. That said, smaller government would sure help, which is why I'm such a proponent of privatization. If our welfare and subsidy programs were privatized (or eliminated in the latter case), we wouldn't need a $3.1 trillion budget because independent companies would shoulder part of the burden with their own profits. And remember, we tried a very small government under the Articles of Confederation, and we know how that turned out. Big government is a major concern, but there is such a thing as too small a government.
I completely disagree with Garrett. Privatizing or eliminating welfare and subsidy programs will only make things worse for Americans. It’s the government's responsibility to take care of people's welfare, not private companies.
I think it’s a little narrow minded for us to ignore the fact that the defense department receives a large amount of money in this proposed budget. In fact, it receives an extra boost because Bush is cutting away at other departments. Knowing this, I don't think the problem will be solved by privatizing healthcare or cutting subsidy programs, seeing that they are not THE major recipient. I hope I'm making myself clear by saying that America needs to cut down on military spending. Its needs to focus its attention on domestic issues like healthcare, education, economy, and a million other things that this administration has conveniently ignored. Focusing more on diplomacy in Iraq and Afghanistan will probably get America the results it seeks rather than using military force which has already drained the treasury.
In my opinion, in regard to the budget, America has very few options to choose from. It either lowers its military expenditures by cutting down on operations and focusing more on diplomacy or it "stays the course" and creates a bulky debt that is larger than the current amount.
Keep in mind that if America invests its money on domestic issues mentioned earlier, it will be easier to repay whatever debt their may be because more and more people will get educated to have a secure job and a secure income to pay taxes along with a strong economy. It’s not logical to spend this money on weapons of war because it’s not helping the average American citizen. I know that some people may say that "the wars are keeping us safe" but then why are we hearing reports that Al Qaida is as strong as ever and opium trade in Afghanistan is fueling Taliban operations? If the government spends money on internal issues even if it is expensive, the money will be paid back because the American people are directly benefiting from it and they will be able to pay it back in the future.
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