The Government Blue Screen of Death

In the recent weeks in politics, both the Democrats and Republicans have been debating over the proposed budget that Obama wants to put into practice for the 2012 fiscal year.  The Democrats want to push the budget through, no questions asked, while the Republicans want deeper spending cuts to stop the government from doing Deficit spending.  Looking over our esteemed President's budget proposal, I would say that the need for larger cutbacks is in order.

Budget Overview - Fiscal Year 2012

From the whitehouse.gov, that is a link to the entire Fiscal Year 2012 budget as proposed by the President.  It outlines a total of 3 trillion dollars in spending, while we only have 2 trillion able to be used.  To allow this type of budget from an entity as large as our government is absurd.  Our government needs to have money to function, and President Obama during his campaign had pledged to stop this type of spending in Washington.  Apparently, like every other promise he has made, he has done little more than lie to the American People.

The fact is, that our government requires money to function.  However, when a government spends money that it does not have, it goes further and further into debt with no way to pay the debt back.    When the democrats are fine with spending a trillion dollars in excess that the government does not have.  Major cuts need to be made in order to make sure the United States doesn't go under once again.

There are many major cutbacks and repeals that could be done in order to make the country much more stable, and none of the politicians are even considering them:

A. Repeal NAFTA.  NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has allowed private organizations to make US jobs commodities on a free trade market.  Companies like Ford and Chrysler, or Microsoft and Apple, can place factories in places that have much lower pay standards, have them manufacture materials and devices, and then ship them over to the US for a much lower cost compared to before the agreement was signed by President Clinton.

B. Shut Down NASA.  With the Shuttle Program ending, and the many, many failures in the recent years by NASA scientists, the organization is being nothing more than a money drain on the government.  We're one of the only financial backers of the International Space Station, and now NASA is looking to move their mission to the first Mars landing.  However, NASA's original purpose of landing on the moon is over.  The space race ended when the Soviet Union dissolved, and all the NASA has done is spend money and lost it in mishaps, explosions, landing failures, and everything else.  NASA however, gets it's own funding from the government, and also is able to get money from the Defense Department's black budget, allowing for increased funding from two places, funding that could be used elsewhere if space was say, privatized to corporations that actually were able to do things on their own.

C. Get out of Libya.  Even though the strikes in Libya have been put onto NATO jurisdiction from the United States, the US is still the biggest financial and military supporter of NATO.  So even though NATO is the one fighting, we're still the one paying the bills.  Getting out of Libya quickly and efficiently, as well as moving faster in the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, would allow us to lower future proposed defense budgets.

D. Repeal the Obama Health Care Bill.  While I do agree that health care in this country is atrocious and something needs to be done, the numerous things on the health care bill make it so that the bill will cost plenty of American business owners more money than they can afford, as well as make billions more in government spending that the government can't already afford.

And finally, E.  Cut jobs.  Many of government works are either overpaid for the jobs they're hired for, or are not doing anything but playing solitaire or doing something unproductive with their time.  People in this situation need to be evaluated for either a pay cut, or even a job cut since their positions are unnecessary or give someone else a little more to do in their job.

However, these are changes that no lawmaker has even suggested to propose, and I even suspect backlash from readers on this.  But quite honestly, these cuts would make drastic improvement on the government finances as it stands.  One thing Obama is correct on though, is that a government shut down now would only hinder the financial recovery of the nation.

If the government does shut down, families that filed their tax returns by mail may not have their returns processed in enough time to get the refunds their waiting for.  People looking for mortgages would be out of luck.  A government shut down at this current time, depending on the amount of time that it shuts down, could potentially be catastrophic and cause another downward spiral.  Our elected officials need to start talking, collaborating, and working for the office they were elected to.