Issue #2- Spnding What We Can Afford

Summary: The U.S. is 13 trillion dollars in debt, and growing every second. Also our countries budget deficits have risen to over 1 trillion dollars each year. Because our budget deficits are so high the U.S. Treasury must borrow money and because they are borrowing money from other countries there will be interest put on the money borrowed, just like if you took out a student loan you would pay more back then what you actually took out because of the interest. Federal deficits are not a new thing to our country though. In 1992 the deficits reached an all time high of $290 billion. People in the country were so worried about it that they passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 which increased taxes and had many spending cuts for the government. After the Act our deficits increased again so George W. Bush and Congress passed tax cuts which helped, but then the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001 happened which lead our country to a new record high budget degicit of $412 billion in 2004. Because of our ridiclious amounts of spending Congress passed a pay-as-you-go budgeting in 2007 which is now known as "paygo." Paygo requires that if there are going to be tax cuts to the people there also has to be reduction in spending in the government so that the two will balance each other out and our countries debt will not increase. But there are debates about whether or not this will work. Many people believe that paygo will work because they believe people will take better care of their money becuase now they can only spend what they have and it could help our economy from a crisis. Others believe that paygo will just hurt our economy because all paygo will do is get peoples taxes to pay for new progrmas that our country dosen't need.

Opinion: If I would have been able to express my feelings toward the pay-as-you-go plan I would have voted in favor of it. I think that people need to not think about themselves so much and realize how much stress and how many problems they could potentially create for generations to come. For example the generation dealing with paygo proably did not really care if they left a bunch of debt to other generations becuase they didn't have to deal with it. But now in 2010 with our debt being over 13 trillion I see that people should have cared more for our generation now so that we can help ourselves and help the generations to come. If they would have passed the paygo I think it would have helped our country. I think that the money would have been budgeted better and watched over more closely becuase they would have known only to spend what they have because they didn't want to go further in debt. Even though paygo was in the 1990s there are still huge debates about it today. For example President Obama has even talked about bringing paygo back into action to try and help us get out of debt, even in the Senate there are still debates and votes going on about paygo today. I feel that paygo would have been a good idea for our country and I stand with the people who are still pushing for it today.

Issue #1- War Dollars
Issue #3- Social Insecurity