Recently, the House of Representatives voted on the current budget proposal. I appreciate the idea of reducing an out of control budget. The U.S. must stop borrowing foreign money to shore up our extravagant govenment wastes. What I do not appreciate is that the new Republican House has once again sold the American people out for big business. In case you did not see an article on the areas reduced and those that were not, please allow me to enumerate them. They passed bills to shield coal companies and oil refineries from environmental clean air standards. They barred the government from shutting down mountaintop mines, believed to endanger water quality in the areas of these operations. School nutrition programs were cut along with heating and housing subsidies for the poor. They also have hampered an overhaul of the financial services industry, the same industry which was almost single-handedly responsible for our current massive national recession. While this seems plenty, they increased the pentagon's budget by almost 2% and cut domestic spending by 12%. In almost every case the votes sided with big business and sided against the populace. Texas Republican, Ted Poe, whose district has more oil refineries than any other showed us once again that talk is cheap, but special interest is alive and well.
I, personally, consider myself an Independent. It seems to me that we really only have one party in office at present, and that is the Spending Party. The only difference between the two parties that I can see is what they vote to spend all our nation's wealth on. Fifty-four percent, $1,449,000,000,000.00, of our annual budget goes to the military. Another 16%, $420,000,000,000.00, goes to maintain the Federal Government, including salaries, maintenance of government lands and structures and benefits for non-military personnel. That leaves $790,000,000,000.00 for everything else. $200,000,000,000.00 of the military budget is reserved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is $3,850,000,000.00 per week, wasted on efforts we are told will thwart terrorism. If we offered One Billion dollars to anyone leading us to the capture of Osama bin Laden and the members of al-Qaida, I'm guessing one of their own would turn them in.
I believe that both our domestic programs and our military programs need to be trimmed back. We should stop funding more than 2 children born to any welfare recipient, as an example of cuts to a domestic program, but we should stop interfering in the affairs of other countries under the guise of hunting down terrorist, too. The programs that really are important are the ones that protect our environment from unscrupulous business practices, support for the poor (noone wants to be poor, and many of the poor are senior citizens), regulations for the out-of-contol financial industry, so that they cannot continue to rob us, programs that protect our children and support their educations, and military funding to keep our homeland safe. Our legislators keep putting Social Security on the table as a program that should be cut, but let's be clear, we all paid for our Social Security benefits, unlike our members of Congress who get pensions, paid for by us, and do not contribute to social security. Something I am pretty sure we will never see is members of Congress voting to reduce their pensions and other benefits.
It is undeniable that we need a strong military, but we do not need to interfere with the affairs of foreign governments. Most of the money we send to these governments ends up in the hands of the few government leaders, and it does not result in the people obtaining their freedoms. It does cause a large percentage of the population to resent the United States, though, and in some cases to increase their domestic military forces and retoric to try to defend against us. We could have the most secure borders in the world if we brought our military personnel home and stationed them at locations considered most at risk for terrorists' activities and drug trafficking. I understand the frustration that the average citizen in the U.S. experiences because it seems our hard earned money, in the form of tax payments, is just being wasted and given away to those who already have the majority of the wealth, but electing more bad leadership is not the answer. At this point, I don't know what is, but a good start would be to contact your Congressmen and tell them we will not tolerate the abuse any longer.
