{"id":3015,"date":"2011-07-28T08:30:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T13:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.loveisanorientation.com\/?p=3015"},"modified":"2012-12-15T20:40:23","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T02:40:23","slug":"gov-and-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/loveisanorientation\/2011\/07\/gov-and-money\/","title":{"rendered":"The Government and Money: I Don&#8217;t Get It"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3016\" src=\"https:\/\/www.loveisanorientation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/house-of-money.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"380\" height=\"380\"><\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t get how the US government can\u2019t stay within a budget without grossly exceeding it every year.<\/p>\n<p>When regular businesses spend all their money and can\u2019t pay, they get shut down (unless you\u2019re a huge bank with lots of ties to the White House, but that\u2019s another thing I don\u2019t understand that frustrates me to no end).<\/p>\n<p>When regular people spend all of their money and can\u2019t pay their bills they get evicted or foreclosed and end up on the street.<\/p>\n<p>When our government spends all of their money they just raise the debt ceiling and go further in debt to, let\u2019s say, China.<\/p>\n<p>One day China will come-a-calling for their money. All of it. And its interest.<\/p>\n<p>And when that happens our country and its economic sustainability is going to be screwed anyway.\u00a0 We\u2019ll probably have to go to war because China won\u2019t be so happy with whatever excuses we come up with.\u00a0So why not clean up our own house right now?<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re already in a recession (even with our Federal income at $2.7 trillion!). We\u2019re already going to have our taxes raised; again. We\u2019re already trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. Why not stay within a budget?\u00a0I\u2019m talking about a real budget. Not those government-pretend-budgets that can be loaned against over and over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>I know their main argument is, \u201cIf any part of our (Federal or State) government collapses we (our country or individual State) will turn to chaos.<\/p>\n<p>Is this not already chaos?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2010\/07\/30\/news\/economy\/state_debt_levels\/index.htm\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">CNN shows that every single State is in debt<\/a>. My State, Illinois, and California, are the worst! Billions of dollars in debt!<\/p>\n<p>Sure, it could get worse. Anything, could always get worse. But this default \/\/ raising the debt ceiling \/\/ borrowing against pension stuff is ridiculous. We need to dramatically cut our spending to stay within a budget that will actually yield savings, not debt. So you might be asking yourself, well, Mr. Smarty-pants, how then would you cut our spending to do such a thing.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for asking. Here are the 4 quickest ways I see this happening:<\/p>\n<p>1. Get the masses of troops and military equipment out of Iraq and Afghanistan:<\/p>\n<p>We can still assist their governments in organizing themselves, their infrastructure and their sustainability diplomatically without having full artillery on site. We\u2019ve tried the other way, and look where that has got us.\u00a0 We\u2019ve spent more money on military than the rest of the world combined. From what I understand, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/USA\/Military\/2011\/0106\/Defense-budget-to-cut-100-billion-Army-and-Marines-will-shrink\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">a new plan<\/a> by Defense Secretary Robert Gates would save us $100 billion.\u00a0That\u2019s if his warning is actually listened to.<\/p>\n<p>2. Cut foreign aid:<\/p>\n<p>The US gave $25 billion in foreign aid last year. The next country is Germany, which gave $13 billion. It\u2019s one thing to support the world\u2019s economy when we\u2019re in the black or close to it. It\u2019s another to do it when our dollar means nothing and our country owes other countries more than the amount of money there is in the entire world put together. The United States also must stop paying for everyone else\u2019s Olympics (See most recently Greece and Brazil). Our foreign aid must be prioritized to the poor countries with nothing \u2013 no food, water, infrastructure; and those that suffer natural disasters. Anything else is not needed at this crucial point.<\/p>\n<p>3. Stop forgiving foreign debt to our country:<\/p>\n<p>This is not the Bible. The United States of America is not run through a Christian worldview. It\u2019s run like biblical Rome. Or Babylon. Our country is a capitalistic business. Our country can\u2019t be the forgiver of debts while simultaneously being the governor of war. China will collect on its loans to us. Do you ever see them forgiving our debt?<\/p>\n<p>4. Keep politicians and government employees accountable for their spending:<\/p>\n<p>Too many private jets, expensive meals, shopping sprees, \u201cdiscretionable funds\u201d, golfing, etc. If politicians are supposed to speak for the people, let them live like us too.<\/p>\n<p>Now I know my 4 ideas are simplistic in nature, and if they were to be accomplished there would have to be many more nuances involved. It has to start somewhere, and these leaders need to be held accountable. Though, I understand accountability is hard when our politically polarized and power-hungry country and its leaders continue to work in the same metric regardless of who is in charge. I can only pray clarity comes to this situation.<\/p>\n<p>Much love.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themarinfoundation.org\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">www.themarinfoundation.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don\u2019t get how the US government can\u2019t stay within a budget without grossly exceeding it every year. When regular businesses spend all their money and can\u2019t pay, they get shut down (unless you\u2019re a huge bank with lots of ties to the White House, but that\u2019s another thing I don\u2019t understand that frustrates me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1306,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[171],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-public-policy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Government and Money: I Don&#039;t Get It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I don\u2019t get how the US government can\u2019t stay within a budget without grossly exceeding it every year. When regular businesses spend all their money and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/loveisanorientation\/2011\/07\/gov-and-money\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Government and Money: I Don&#039;t Get It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don\u2019t get how the US government can\u2019t stay within a budget without grossly exceeding it every year. 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