Monday, January 25, 2010

Right. Just What We Need.

Obama is calling for a Federal Budget freeze in 2011. He is planning on using his State of the Union address to push for his plan across with Congress. The Obama administration is claiming that "If Congress follows suit, taxpayers will save $250 billion over 10 years. That figure reflects what would be spent without a freeze on "non-security" programs."

Obama's administration is already suspecting that they will get opposition to their plan "among some on Capitol Hill". The only exempted spendings are "$663 billion for defense, $56 billion for veterans, $43 billion for homeland security, and $53 billion for foreign aid." This all seems like a lot of federal money to be spending, but officials claim that it is only a small step toward a big change in the US economy.

This could be viewed as bad and good in different ways. 1, this will definitely get America to realize which programs and departments are essential to the survival of the nation and which ones we take for granted. 2, it's about time we cut Federal spending and reduce unecessary spending. On the bad side, it may result in execess money that may be spent elsewhere unecessarily rather than actually trying to recover from our economic crisis currently.

On a good note though, "The officials said Obama will seek increases in some spending on unspecified priorities such as education and the environment." Could California somehow get a large portion of that for helping other states? hmmm...

4 comments:

Lily Y said...

Probably not. ;( Do we deserve it? I think so because California has pretty high taxes. Though I hope if California does get that sort of money, that it will go towards bettering education rather than its facilities (even some though some schools look like prisons and ours is no exception!) Our office is the wrong type of red..

Patrick Huynh said...

The reconstruction was the wrong use of money. Maybe I'm over thinking it, but shouldn't education come first? and that looks didn't matter? but I guess looks did matter, and foot traffic is only worse due to the expansion of the office into the center court area... oh well. only 4 more months (oh my god. only 4 more months. that's a scary thought)

Andrew said...

This is way too much money to be spending right now.

"This all seems like a lot of federal money to be spending, but officials claim that it is only a small step toward a big change in the US economy."

I wonder who those officials are?

"On the bad side, it may result in excess money that may be spent elsewhere unecessarily rather than actually trying to recover from our economic crisis currently."

Exactly.

"'The officials said Obama will seek increases in some spending on unspecified priorities such as education and the environment.'"

They all say that, but who knows what will happen. Time will tell.

Hen to the Ry said...

I think this is actually a pretty good idea. I don't know if we actually need to be spending that much money on the military (since we do spend the most money on our military, compared with the other nations). However, as for fixing California, I don't know if that's really up to the federal government. Don't state governments usually handle those sorts of things (with I guess, a little help from the federal government)? Also, with the extra money, I think we help ease our trade deficits, and maybe help the economy (although, fixing the economy might also cause a lot of money). As for education, I think if we dropped/ altered the "No Student Left Behind" program put forth by Bush (I think this is still going on), we can save some money.

-Henry Zhang