Spending what we can afford is an important issue that could in fact make or break this country. With the national debt racking up to nearly $12,000,000,000,000 (12 Trillion) in debt, and even more coming at the end of the year because of a 1.5 trillion dollar budget deficit to come from 2009 alone, the lending comes from the United States Population, lending institutions, foreign banks, and the Social Security trust fund, It is growing more and more everyday with everything we spend going on the tab. With the economy in a recession, and spending on the rise, more and more loans are being taken out by the United States. Some experts predicted surpluses through 2010, but with the economy the way it is, taxes have generated less monies the past year. Taxes could bring in more money within the next few years some think because Bush’s tax cuts will be taken away, which he argues will not help the economy because the cuts brought us out of the recession when he was in office. Earmarks, “Pork” to critics, cost the government more than $64 billion dollars. Money we could spend on other programs that approved by Congress, which could benefit our country greatly. Our $2.9 trillion spent of programs and agencies, breaking down the spending into four main categories: defense, nondefense, discretionary, mandatory, and interest on the national debt. The spending on nondefense discretionary spending, amounting to about $456 billion, pays for the federal programs adjusted every year. With Medicare spending it could consume nearly half of the whole federal budget, within the upcoming 10 years. These are the reasons for the rapidly growing debt, and concern for it.
Spending in this country needs to be re- analyzed. This year in particular with the bailouts to many companies for billions of dollars, and the proposed health care that could cost billions, spending has increased while we have not brought in as much money with the economic situation we are in. Loaning money from other countries puts us into their hands, and gives them power. As Robert Barro, renowned economist believes and so do I the way to fix that is to only spend what we can afford using a method of pay-as-you-go budgeting, also known as “paygo.” I think that the government should follow the same guidelines that my families, and the rest of America uses, spend only what you can afford and pay for. Without spiking the taxes of the wealthy, like many like to do, and just controlling our spending on unnecessary programs and earmarks, we can accumulate enough money to start to have surpluses, and pay back to our debtors.
Social Insecurity
War Dollars
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