Subscribe to my Feed
« $700 billion for the bailout, but NOTHING for enforcement? | Home | Is it ethical for doctors to prescribe placebos? »
What budget cuts will the next President make?
By Lauren | October 25, 2008
Our nation is facing over $1 trillion in debt in the coming year. Yes, I’m including the $700 billion Wall Street bailout - our leaders have committed us to pay the money, so I think it counts as debt regardless of what the politicians want to call it. Consequently, it was disheartening that Senators McCain and Obama both failed to respond specifically in the debates to questions about which of their planned programs they would cut or defer in the wake of the financial crisis gripping the nation.
Both candidates have talked about using various instruments to cut the federal budget. Senator Obama has promised to use a scalpel. Not to be outdone, Senator McCain has said he’d use a sledgehammer and a scalpel. (What’s next - a jackhammer?) It’s all hyperbole anyway - the real question is what each of them would do to bring our national budget back into balance.
What neither candidate has told you is that the discretionary items in the federal budget represent a very small percentage of the money the government spends overall. The vast majority of federal dollars go to fixed expenses, like servicing all of that debt. And then, of course, there are the expenses that get paid but somehow magically never make it into the budget, like much of the cost of the war in Iraq. (More on that next week.) A private person who ran up a mountain of debt with the expectation that his or her kids would pay it off someday would be considered grossly unethical - isn’t it long past time we got our nation’s budget under control?
The next President will face tough choices about what programs to cut, what expenses to defer, and how to bring our nation’s wildly unbalanced finances back into order. Would it be ethical to cut taxes when the national debt is already so high? Would it be ethical to deny essential services to people who truly need them when we’ve just promised Wall Street a record bailout? What’s your candidate’s position on balancing the national budget, and are you okay with it? You decide.
Topics: Presidential Campaign, Social Ethics, ethics |
October 26th, 2008 at 6:46 am
[...] Our nation is facing over $1 trillion in debt in the coming year. Yes, I’m including the $700 billion Wall Street bailout - our leaders have committed us to pay the money, so I think it counts as debt regardless of what the politicians … Read the rest of this great post here [...]
October 27th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
As far as I can tell, there are no viable candidates for President, Senator or Representative that understand the recent and present budget fiascos are financial abuse to younger generations.