Hi again cadets and great job on the last assignment on what law you would change for the Constitution. If you were King again, now you can tackle the job of balancing the budget for our government. Look at the link that is provided and let everyone know what area of the budget you would cut and for what reasons. Remember that there are always consequences when you cut the budget so keep those in mind. Don't forget to also comment on your peer's work as well.
Good luck again and here is the link showing the Budget Information you need.
Federal Budget Link
Good luck again and here is the link showing the Budget Information you need.
Federal Budget Link
A. Lee 7
ReplyDeleteOne department I feel should receive far less funding is the Department of Health and Human Services. While it would be acceptable to receive financial aid temporarily, it should not be something that is taken for granted. The truth of the matter is, too many people abuse the welfare system and many of the other services the government provides. The Federal government gives too many benefits to people who do not deserve or work for it. By providing welfare and food stamps for the unemployed who simply do not want to work, we take millions of dollars away from Americans who do work.
Rather than simply paying the expenses of an unemployed person, that person should pay for his own expenses. While although it is hard to acquire a job with today's market being in the state that it is now, these people should be encouraged to work with the rewards of a paycheck rather than being encouraged to nothing with the reward of a welfare check. By teaching people that they do not need to work to have their expenses paid, welfare and other benefits are taken for granted. Its Common Sense that if you give someone a paycheck for doing nothing they won't do anything to change this.
Instead of providing welfare to the unemployed, we should instead improve education while encouraging unskilled labor programs similar to those introduced in the New Deal such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). In doing so it both discourages idleness and laziness while at the same time performing tasks that aid the community and provide a job for the people who are now unemployed. When I say this, I do not say this as a rule that job programs should be exactly like the CCC, do not necessarily have to be hard labor, but should be something that is a task and will help accomplish something.
Another issue with welfare is that there are many people who cannot financially support their children. The truth of the matter is that people should not be having children if they cannot afford to support them. Also, the government should not be paying money to raise these children. One of the people I had worked with this summer had posted about how some people have too many children and cannot afford it and expect the government to pay for the expenses of these children (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPRtIOmPOD0). Him and his wife have been together nearly 15 years and have only just decided to have a child because they have become able to support their child financially. Having children is a privilege, not a right, and people should not be having children if they cannot afford them. People who repeatedly have babies despite being unable to afford these children should receive one of two reprimands. They should either be required to utilize birth control such as a vasectomy or have the children taken away from them because they are unfit to take care of the children financially. Someone who is so irresponsible as to bring children into this world that they cannot support should not be taking care of said children.
The abuses of the welfare system are a major issue, but are only one example of a much bigger problem. Abuses of any system must be minimized. Accountability needs to be stricter, we cannot afford to be lackadaisical with our money or with regards to giving birth to babies and we cannot afford others to be either. Government officials might seek to help these people, but the truth of the matter is that sometimes you cannot help someone because they need to help themselves.
wow cadet, I don't really know what to tell you exactly. Excellent response, perfect SAT words and a lot of other things that I don't know how to describe it. Excellent job Andrew!!
DeleteAs expected, a very well written opinion. Your skills and vocabulary are excellent. It is no wonder that you are going for Eagle Scout. I know that you will make it and keep up the good work with your writing. Looks like you are going to make a habit of being the first to post to our blog all the time. :-)
ReplyDeleteThank you First Sergeant
Deleteif I was Queen I would have a time watcher to see how money I would sped and give to the people because I wouldn't want to be overthrew by the people. I would give everyone the same amount of money and if they have spend it all I would pay for the things that they need , but ill have to get a little more taxes so the government would not have a deep amount of money that they need to pay back so everything would be a little more balance with the government.
ReplyDeleteA. Lee 7
DeleteI am having a hard time understand what you are saying. While I do not know what you mean by a "Time watcher", I do know that in the Department of the Treasury we have an Inspector General of the Treasury. "The Inspector General is required to keep both the Secretary and the Congress fully and currently informed about the problems and deficiencies relating to the administration of department programs and operations and the necessity for corrective action." (Treasury.gov). In laymen's terms, the Inspector General is in charge of monitoring our revenue, expenditures and any economic problems we might have.
http://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-structure/ig/Pages/default.aspx
M.Torres 7
ReplyDeleteOne of the programs I would cut off budget is the Foreign aid. We are taking care of countries that are hungry and need medical attention, but we have those problems right in our backyard. We have millions of people starving and sick. We need to focus them. 1 out of 6 Americans are in hunger. Were taking care of people around but the American people should come first. We are letting our own people suffer.
I agree 100% our country should be more concerned with its own people rather then people in other countries.
DeleteI totally agree with you on that, because we do need to fix that. Also, most people from other countries would say we're being selfish now and don't care about them. So we would be hated for helping ourselves and not others.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA. Abdou 8
ReplyDeleteMandatory spending has increased. Spending to pay benefits for Social Security, Medicare and other mandated programs has been more than $2 trillion a year since FY 2011. These payments consume most of the revenue in each year. They cannot be changed without an act of Congress. This is difficult to do politically, since any benefits that are cut will take money out of the pockets of current beneficiaries.
The difference between the U.S. government and you is that the President and Congress plan to overspend. (Hopefully, you don't!) This is for three reasons:
1) The more the government spends, the more it stimulates the economy. That's because government spending is, itself, a component of GDP.
2) There are many other countries, like China, willing to lend us the money.
3) Politicians get elected for creating jobs and growing the economy. They lose elections when unemployment is high and for raising taxes.
http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/deficit.htm
A. Lee 7
DeleteCadet Abdou, I understand that you agree with the site you used and you tried to summarize the article using exact quotes from the article, but the truth of the matter is that by copying the verbatim (exact words) for the entirety of your submission, you failed to show any original thought or understanding of what you read. Even though you provided a link to the source you used, from my understanding this would be plagiarism. I am not saying this to hurt you or insult you, but rather I am trying to help you.
A. Lee 7
DeleteMost teachers would not accept this because even though you cited your source, you used the exact word for word statements from someone else. Using quotes is acceptable, so long as BOTH the source is cited AND you add in your own understanding of the subject at hand and original thought.
R.Colca 8
ReplyDeleteOne way to help fix the budget in the U.S, would be to stop providing everyone from other countries who come to the U.S a gold platter. We offer Foreigners the world, a place to live, in some cases free food, free living, welfare, and much more. Our government focuses to help people who come from other countries more then they focus to help the people that have been here for generations. We give people from other countries a sense of entitlement that they have all of those good and wonderful things coming to them and truthfully they do.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance
M. Conrad 8
DeleteI totally agree with this. I think that our government should worry more about its own people instead of foreigners that want to come to our country. It seems that these foreigners are abusing all of the free stuff that our government give them just for moving here.
M. Khan 8
DeleteI agree it Cadet Colca, we focus so much on helping others and continuously accept more and more citizens to the U.S.A. We are becoming extremely scarce on incredibly valuable resources and foreigners continuously come into the country and either provide cheap labor or are illegal. They aren't very educated but still come here and once they do come here their children don't even have the, push, to help and achieve.
I hope that you are feeling better and glad you were able to post your comment. Don't forget to post a comment on your peer's work as well.
ReplyDeleteN.Vera 8
ReplyDeleteIf I were king the one budget the I would cut is Welfare. I know it sounds like a bad idea but we really need to do that, because so many people abbuse it these days. There are alot of people who really do need it, and I wouldn't take that away, but there are those few who just dont want to do things for themselves. They just want to love under the government so they could have an easy life. Although, it does sound like a good idea but it's not right for the people who do need it. Instead of just giving them money, I say that the money I would cut would go to education. So, if the government stops paying for the person they can start there own life and not become homeless. Then at the end evryone could live better; eventhough, they would be mad at first they would understand and finally learn life isn't always easy
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100210244/under-any-welfare-system-some-deserving-people-lose-and-some-undeserving-people-win/
M.Torres 7
DeleteI agree with with you about this topic. A lot of people abuse this program, but a lot of need it. It would be a very hard decision to cut budget on welfare though.
I agree with this completely, if welfare is going to be an option, it should be for people who really deserve, not just because they're lazy & don't want to improve their lives & just waste everyone's tax dollars.
Deletei agree with this 100 percent if all these benefits were an option only people that are in need and really need a helping hand most are these people that use these benefits have enough to maintain them self's while others cant .
DeleteM. Conrad 8
ReplyDeleteIf I were king I would reduce the amount of money we spend on producing expensive weapon programs. There are weapon programs that we do not need but the government still spends millions of dollars on them. It might seem like a good idea to try and be advanced in military technology, but those plans are hurting the country more than they are helping it.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-money-spent-on-arms-and-weapons-a-waste
M. Khan 8
ReplyDeleteIf I were king, I would get rid of foreign aid. We as a country are putting many valuable resources into other countries who are experiencing catastrophes. It is very unfortunate such countries are experiencing such problems but it is not our obligation to help them, we are already $17 trillion in debt. We can't afford to help other countries, we must prioritize and help our own country before looking at others. It is unfortunate that we cannot help those in need but we must help our own nation.
I have 2 links, one is a clock of the U.S. debt and the other is a video on foreign aid.
1) U.S. Debt-clock: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
2) YouTube video on foreign aid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2QH9RhEVs
Y. Alvarez 7
ReplyDeleteIf I were King, well Queen, one budget law I'd like to get rid of is welfare, to an extent as least. My mom works with several people who survive off welfare & she knows her self that they abuse that money, that's our parents' tax money, if they didn't abuse the money on alcohol, drugs, or unnecessary items, then it wouldn't be such a big deal, but several people just depend on welfare & don't try to improve themselves, they just use society's money to ruin their own lives even more, they don't try to improve themselves what they're doing with their lives. Getting rid of welfare would cause a lot of controversy, because of unemployment & the fact the country's in so much debt, but if you haven't even tried to fix up your life to not depend on the program, then you shouldn't be able to qualify for it, it's not fair to those who are trying but dont get accepted, it's just something that's given out, there are a few guidelines that have to be met, but several times, they lie about what they're conditions are & just abuse the entire opportunity given to them.
http://www.wmctv.com/story/19151942/the-investigators-how-welfare-dollars-are-being-abused
Kudos on such an arrcurate statement. I agree with no hesitation, the sadesr part of this is that people always misuse the money our own government sends them to aid them to thier own personal advantage. The govt should " hammer down " on this problem a.s.a.p if you ever run for king or queen please inform me.
DeleteJ. McZeno 7
A. Gaudet 8
DeleteI could not agree with you more. A while back, this girl on twitter tweeted something along the lines of, "Hate me if you want, but I honestly don't think it's fair that my parents are paying for the food on your table when you're perfectly capable of paying for it yourselves." She was speaking on welfare and was harshly harassed for stating such a blunt statement, but in all honestly she had every right to feel that way. So many people abuse these programs and others are left to deal with the repercussions.
J. McZeno
ReplyDeleteIf I were King, one budget I'd completely get rid of would be the nuclear budget. In the U.S we are expected to spend 660 - 661 billion dollars on nuclear weapons. Theres not much else needed to say that this is clearly far too much on something the government dosent particularly need. With this money or at least just a small fraction of it wed be well to help almost every part of our governtment that actually needs money.So many opportunity can be presented by just cutting this budget i not dismantling it completely.
http://ploughshares.org/what-nuclear-weapons-cost-us
j.garzon
ReplyDeleteif i were king i would mange to find out about the people that are using welfare but arent really in need . there are to many people that are really need and cant feed there family's. if i mange to find out that you are really not in need of these benefits and you are economically stable i will charge a fine for all the year you used the card and all the times you swiped the card.
to manny people are in need and the problem needs to be fixed .
Deletehttp://www.wmctv.com/story/19151942/the-investigators-how-welfare-dollars-are-being-abused
I completely agree with Cadet Garzon. This is not only a threat to the nation's budget, but the very welfare of it's citizens as well. This is simply immoral and needs to be stopped.
DeleteIf I were king, the area of Defense would be the one to take a cut. Why might you ask? Well, in 2012, the United States of America spent 682 billion dollars on defense. The U.S. spent more on defense in 2012 than did the countries with the next 10 highest defense budgets combined! To put it into further perspective, China, the country second in defense spending, only allocated 106.4 billion dollars for it's military. It cost half a million in Iraq and nearly a million dollars in Afghanistan to maintain each soldier per year. Obviously fewer foreign interventions would save hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. Although the United States does need a large and eminent military to protect it's citizens, I believe we could cut some percentage of spending here. It is simply not necessary. We are spending too much on the military! Here is a link where I gathered much of my data. It is very informative. http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison
ReplyDelete