To halve the debt by 2013...

All you have to do is increase taxes! And scale back on government! And stop giving $787 billion bailouts!

Now guess which one Obama isn't proposing. That's right- we're going to keep bailing people out while we simultaneously decrease the national debt. Uh-huh. Sure.

Anyway- this new budget our very dear President Obama is proposing will help cut the annual budget deficit down to only $533 billion instead of $1.3 trillion by 2013. They're going to accomplish this by cutting back on war spending, taking away tax breaks for people who make $250,000 or more, and 'streamlining government'.

Three reasons why those things aren't going to work.
1) The government's involved in it
2) The government loves to break promises
3) No way is that same government going to 'streamline' itself! (I'd love to do it's 'streamlining' for it, but that's another blog post.)

For starters, I really don't see how in the world we can cut back on spending in Iraq and the Middle East when we're sending yet more troops into say, Afghanistan. Doesn't make much sense, now does it? Sending more people, by the very nature of the action, costs more money. You have to pay for those soldiers to be transported, pay for them to be fed, housed, clothed...paid! Yeah. Not buying it.

Taking away tax breaks is going to hurt us much more than it's going to help us. $250,000 annually- let's face it- actually isn't that much nowadays. That's a pittance in places like New York City, where often rent for a decent place is usually $3,000 or more monthly! Yeah, it might sound like a lot, but it really isn't. And besides, those people who make more than that are often investors. If the investors can't invest because they don't have money, guess what's going to happen? Businesses are going to go under because they won't have money to stay in business anymore.

Thirdly- streamlining government? Gimme' a break. Congress will never streamline itself- at least, not for real- because then they wouldn't have as much power! If you take away some of those very, very, very important positions like, say, the Administration on Aging or the Endangered Species Committee, then Congress wouldn't have as many stooges to boss around- not to mention not half as many cool options to play around with!

Anyway- I'm really not buying this. It seems silly, to think that doing such things (that won't really get done, or won't achieve the desired result), will actually help or better anyone.

I have an idea to lower the national deficit. Let's cut down on all of the programs we're funding. Let's cut out foreign aid, stop giving bailouts, stop giving loans, stop all this stupid, wasteful spending...then I do believe our problem would be solved.