Obama's Meek Budget Cuts

"President Obama is taking a scalpel, instead of an axe,
 to the federal budget" (Mike Emanuel, FOX NEWS).

President Obama recently made a list of 121 budget cuts that would total around 17 billion dollars. While talking about his budget cuts Obama discusses the difficulties that come with budget cutting,

"For every dollar we seek to save there will be those who have an interest in seeing it spent, butat this moment--at this difficult time for our nation--we cannot accept business as usual, we cannot accept anything less than a government ready to meet the challenges of our time. But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone's accounting"

Although this is very true, $17 billion a year is only about .5% of the $3.4 trillion Congress approved in spending for the next year. Sen. Judd Gregg of the Senate Budget Committee is not happy about the new budget plans. "It's as if you took a teaspoon of water our of the bathtub while you left the spicket on a full speed". Sen. Judd along with many others fear the debt America is continuing to climb into will soon put us at the level of a third world country status.


Now I understand that budget cuts and saving money that is needed to be spent is going to be a long difficult task. What I am concerned about is that the money that is going to be saved and cut is just going to be funneled back into other programs to increase their funding. The fact that Obama is pleased with only 121 budget cuts not even enough to cover 1% of the upcoming trillions of dollars being spent, makes me think that we are going to have a big problem, and that the "Great Recession" is going to be an issue greater than the "Great Depression".

Obama's Budget Plan Increasing Taxes

Most people know about Obama’s trillion dollar budget planned passed by The Senate and it is giving a lot of Republicans, among others, worried about what this will do to the future generations. With the new budget plan, there will have to be higher taxes to pay it off and will leave our future generations with a ton of debt for our actions today.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty says that President Obama talked about tax relief, but his new budget wont be any help on providing tax relief.

“I thought President Obama's proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses was a pretty good idea. And his pledge to lower taxes for middle-class Americans was something Republicans wholeheartedly supported," Pawlenty said in the GOP radio and Internet address. "But the budget that Congress is considering doesn't provide that tax relief."

Obama’s new administration is allowing small businesses to have capital gains taxes, but those taxes will remain high even after Obama is out of office.

Referring to Obama’s 3.6 trillion budget proposal, Pawlenty says “The federal government should keep a lid on taxes, control government spending and borrow less -- rather than increase the size and scope of the federal government so much that Washington is guaranteeing future tax increases”.

I think that the government should find new ways to help increase jobs instead of just spending more and more money, when America doesn’t have money to be spending. I believe Obama’s spending plan will be efficient for only a short period of time, eventually all the money we are spending and the money we are borrowing will come back to bite us in the ass when it comes time to pay it off. The spending we are letting the Obama administration do is just causing debt and higher taxes for ourselves, our children and grandchildren.

Obama going "Green"

America’s “need to look to alternative energy is real, as well as making use of the energy sources we use now both as efficient and safe as possible” (Johnson). The push to “go green”, meaning to utilize environment-friendly methods of construction, has become increasingly possible and was repeated over and over in Obama’s campaigning. However, Obama fails to mention who America would be “partnering” up with the make this green dream a reality. Brian M. Johnson talks about Obama’s Green Jobs and the out come of adding more names to the roll sheet regardless of whether those names want to partner with the unions or not. Johnson gives amazing statistics of how much Labor has given to the Democratic Party over the years and makes a good point about “the President benefiting Labor without any regard for the individual employee/ employer”.Brian Johnson is a known Republican blogger from RedState.com and this article was probably meant for other Republicans to read and see an insight on some of the new president’s legislators. His states his claims and arguments with a lot of evidence, including the Green Jobs Act of 2007 and an example of who is eligible, he also includes number statistics on how Democrats are benefiting from certain go green acts.

How much are kids learning about sex?

John Young, from Waco Tribune, "break(s) the silence" on the lack of sex education in today's public schools. Young points out that sex ed programs in school are teaching either false facts about sex or just teaching the alternative; abstinence. I think he made a really good point about sex ed in health classes. Kids are ignorant about a lot the facts and knowing that most of them will not follow the abstinence code, they need to be informed about STDs, AIDs et cetera. Young gives a great example comparing sex education to multiplication saying everyone would be shocked if kids today didn't know how to multiply, but its okay for kids not to know about sperm, menstruation and ovum. Personally, when I was in health or biology classes, we had about a week of sex education, with the teachers being very conservative and not actually giving all the gory details that need to be given. I believe this editorial needs to be read by parents and other adults around, because it could be their kids or relatives that are the naive ones and I think that kids should know the facts and from then on be able to make a personal choice what to do with their bodies.

Here is the full copy of Young's article Break the Silence on Sex Education

Stimulus Bill Passes on Friday

On Friday a stimulus bill was passed in the House approving the $787 billion stimulus package. Democrats won the vote 246 to 183, having not one Republican vote in favor of the bill. Democrats hope this stimulus package will boost the middle class and help create new jobs. However, Republicans see the bill as not focusing as much on jobs but more on spending that will hurt tax payers in generations to come. President Obama on the other hand, is in full support of the new plan and is eager to sign it. This article is important to look at because is showing slowly the line between Democrats and Republicans growing farther and farther apart and will also be demonstrating the different ways our country is trying to get out of the current economic slump, whether it hurts us in the long run or not.
The link below is the New York Times article on the newly passed stimulus bill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/politics/14web-stim.html?_r=1&hp