Ryan Price's Soapbox

Ok so I felt the need to address this issue for those who haven’t been following the news lately.  This past week our president sent a shockwave through the country by putting on the table a budget for 2011 to the tune of 3.7 trillion dollars. Now I’m pretty sure Mr. Obama is aware that we have an ugly problem sitting on the horizon and its only going to get worse if ignore it. A run down of the budget basically adds 10 billion more for the department of education and department of energy plus an additional 100+ billion to Medicare. The rest of it includes covering in its entirety this year’s discretionary spending, which is $1.415 trillion or 37 percent of the government’s total outlays. Mandatory spending on items such as entitlements and interest payments make up the rest. After speaking to liberal and conservative friends alike they all realize this is a problem that must be dealt with. If the American people can tighten their belts the government should to. I can propose long term solutions that ultimately would help this country from getting into this situation again. A few of those are:

1. Close some of the over 800 bases we have around the world. We need to follow Thomas Jefferson’s idea of Trade with everyone but avoid entangling in alliances. Cost of maintaining these bases would disappear and or we could auction it off to the host country, we don’t need to play nanny or have multiple base locations like the 12 plus in Germany.
2. Partial-Privatizing of Social Security – In recent years the federal government has been dipping its hands into the Social Security fund to borrow money when it needs as well as borrowing from countries like China. To avoid the coming tidal wave of retirees roll these over into private accounts where older people will be grandfathered into the old system while moving those under the retirement age into a system where FICA goes toward your own retirement with the options to contribute more or less. Basically this would create a nest egg for everyone and avoid the government having to deal with the over 50 trillion+ in unfunded liabilities for Social Security. More details can be worked in but it’s a start.
3. CUT CUT CUT Medicare and Medicaid – Cut the waste in these programs off, with modifications to the Obamacare bill, I would make the health care sector more competitive and make the marketplace have to pick up and give our seniors special plans that fit their needs, this could be better than Medicare if done correctly and actually kill off the beast which is currently a big eater of the budget as well.
4. Cut Defense spending – Wow did I just say that? Yes I did, we are the worlds superpower, we do not need 800 billion dollars going to the defense program when we can operate it for far less and we are coming out with better technology.
5. Stop funding foreign governments – Did you know we give Egypt about 1.5 billion dollars a year…basically for being our friends.  Israel? 2.04 billion dollars in military aid alone with an additional 800 billion toward economic support. Israel can take care of themselves… right there is about 5 billion dollars that can be spent on home for job creation and promoting growth here in America.
6. Manufacture in America – clear and simple we have become a country of consumers…we don’t make anything. How did we get out of World War II when our debt to GDP was over 115%??? We were a manufacturing powerhouse…more jobs here would promote more growth and more people would buy American made things if companies were given better incentives to come back home.

I know I’m not a economist and never claim to be but there are so many areas we can improve and cut and our senators and congressmen aren’t fighting hard enough for it…when will you? When its too late? Obama’s budget says that next year the deficit will cap at 1.65 trillion and then start coming down and shave off 1 trillion off the debt in the next 10 years…that’s taking into account that over the next decade we have consistent growth of over 4% …that’s being a little too hopeful considering our current state 3 years after the recession. If this recession and our massive accumulation of debt has taught us anything its we need to save for our future and not leave our kids with more debt that they will have to deal with in the future, it isn’t right and they don’t deserve that. Gambling our future away is going to hurt us individually and give a lesser quality of life for our children and their future children. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Ryan Price -