Obama administration mishandles budget

More than $768 billion will go to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, buying predator drones and building more weapons in the fiscal year 2011, according to the Obama administration’s Monday budget release.

Obama also proposed a three-year spending freeze on several domestic programs, including farm subsidies and education.

The controversial freeze would only save approximately $250 billion from 2011-13, according to administration officials, chump change when it comes to the deficit in this country.

If the president were serious about a spending freeze, he would consider stopping military expenditures for those three years, which he is not doing.

The U.S. will spend $768.2 billion on defense in 2011 alone, according to the budget release.

That is enough money to pay for pretty much any of the health care plans, whose bills are now stalled in Congress.

It would also cover the cost of green-technology construction including continental high-speed rail lines, residential solar panels and nationwide wind turbines.

Instead, the government will spend that money on continuing two disastrous wars, building more bombs, more helicopters, more planes and finding new, expensive ways to kill other people.

The U.S. spends nearly as much money on defense than the rest of the world combined, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s FY 2009 report.

World military expenditures totaled $1.473 trillion in 2008 and of that amount, the U.S. spent $711 billion, or 48 percent of the total, according to the center’s statistics.

Even though the reported figure for FY 2009 was $515.4 billion for defense spending, that number did not include nuclear weapons, combat figures or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were included in the numbers used by CACNP.

A military-spending tab ringing up at nearly $1 trillion makes talk of a domestic-spending freeze hard to digest for Americans, regardless of political persuasion.

If the administration has to halt certain expenditures, the most unnecessary should be first on the chopping block.

A rare consensus, both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) agree upon a defense-spending freeze.

So as to not end on a sad and aggravating note, some positive things did make it into the budget report.

According to the FY 2011 budget, the Obama administration will repeal many of the Bush-era tax breaks for wealthy families and individuals as well as oil, coal and gas companies, resulting in more than $1 trillion designated for green-technology funding.

The budget also included an extension for middle-class tax breaks, and small businesses will receive some benefits for hiring more workers.

Other optimistic budget items included a revoke of the No Child Left Behind Act, a funding-halt for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada and an increase in Pell Grant tuition by $17 billion.

http://www.thebluebanner.net/obama-administration-mishandles-budget-1.1112216