A trillion is a number that nobody understands. Its just too big. A billion is too big as well. A billion is one thousand million. When you have a million, you must collect one thousand of those millions before you have a billion. Well… a trillion is when you collect one thousand of those billions. Nine trillion is when the universe explodes.
Here is what we know. Since Bush took office, he has raised the debt limit five times, and it now currently stands at $9.815 trillion. This is a lot of money. You know who the government borrows from? Your pension and social security. Isn’t that nice? We also owe Japan, China, the U.K., and many oil exporting countries.
But that doesn’t matter, does it? The president is responsible for paying off that debt. He has made it clear that his priorities lie in killing people in the middle east, and lining his pockets, so we are going to have to look somewhere else.
The first thing we need to do is severely curtail military spending. We don’t need more nukes than Jesus. The Pentagon gives itself some 400 billion every year so that it can continue to line the pockets of presidents and politicians who are invested in oil companies. But it also seems like a military build up of mass proportions. Unless we plan on invading planet Earth, I don’t think we need more nukes than Russia, China and everyone else combined times 3.
So, annually we spend $38 billion on education, $50 billion on children’s’ health insurance, $13 billion on humanitarian aid, and $2 billion on non-oil dependency. But then, we spend $463 billion on the Pentagon.
Our prestigious panel of high-ranking retired military and Dept. of Defense officials says $60 billion can be trimmed from the Pentagon budget without putting our troops at risk, weakening our national defense, or hurting our ability to fight terrorists. According to Dr. Lawrence Korb, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense, the savings would come primarily from cutting obsolete Cold War weapons and excessive nuclear weapons from the defense budget. See Korb Report for more information.
If we invested in education and healthcare what we did in the pentagon, we might have a new generation of better educated children (ones who don’t think God created humans with magical clay) with better jobs and more income, which in turn is better for the economy, which in turn is better for the national debt. Countries invest in us because of our strong economy, but we know that in order to avoid losing that interest, we need to keep it strong. So how can we get our economy on the treadmill and lifting glorious weights everyday? Invest in life, not death.
Death is stupid. Life is smart. Two heads are better than one, blowing up someone’s head with an M16 reduces two heads to one head.
It would seem that we are more interested in raising our children to be soldiers who sacrifice themselves so that corrupt presidents can get richer than raising our children to be successful scholars, artists, musicians and businessmen and women.
Obviously, none of us are smart enough to figure out how to reduce the national debt, thats why we need to throw some money at school and hope they produce smarter people.
Enjoy.
“This post is being submitted to the Facing Up Blog Carnival on the $9
Trillion Debt”
whereIstand Tags
- GeorgeWBush
- What effect do current national debt levels have on the U.S. economy?
- Are current consumer debt levels a danger to the US Economy?
- Does the government have a responsibility to save consumers from consumer debt?
- Should more economically stable countries forgive 100% of African nations’ debt?
- Should the U.S. seek to reduce federal spending?
- How should the U.S. approach the military defense budget?