Monday, September 22, 2008

700,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000,000

FY2008:
$59 billion last year on education (about one tenth of FY2009 Defense Department budget)
$44.8 billion on veterans affairs to provide care to our nations veterans
$15 billion on transportation (how many bridges did they say did not meet basic safety standards, or how many hours have you spent on unforgivably undersized Route 76).

Bush requested a total of 928.8 billion dollars for FY2009 for every federal agency combined. The defense department makes up $515.4 billion (pre-war budget, the war "supplemental" spending is about an additional $200 billion) with $413 billion for everything else.

And we are giving $700 billion to Wall Street.

Aren't there better ways to use the money? I guess I just don't believe that the economy can't take the failure of a few large Wall Street banks. It might mean a Focus instead of a BMW for some on Wall Street, but most of us are already driving a Ford or Toyota anyway, if we are lucky enough to even have a car. Lehman Brothers failed last week and my bank account stayed the same, prices did not go up and there were not lines at the gas stations. Actually, I refinanced Amanda's car last week and got a better interest rate.

They talk about it becoming difficult to get auto loans, and mutual funds loosing value. How many mutual funds do you think the average person living paycheck to paycheck has?

Last September there was a huge debate in congress about expanding the State Children's Health care Insurance Program (SCHIP). It was going to cost 35 billion over the next 5 years. We decided then, that providing insurance to 4 million un/under insured children was not worth it. With a trillion dollars we could fund that program for 142 years (not counting inflation).

Perhaps ensuring health care coverage and doubling or tripling our education budget would have a much greater long term effect than writing a check to cover the bad decisions of a few thousand Wall Street Bankers.

Perhaps then, our high school students would not rank between Iceland and the Slovak Republic in math scores (as of 2006 we're number 23 in the world). Maybe by teaching our children some better math skills, they won't have the problems Wall Street seems to have-- i.e. balancing a check book.

--Pete--

2 comments:

Tiffany and Jeremy said...

I totally agree. It is sad that we spend so much money on war and making the rich richer.

Martha said...

You said it perfectly! I actually rode on the plane yesterday with a man who is on the Board of Directors for a bank here in the East. He thinks paying the bankers won't help the economy, but only give more pocket change to those in charge. If we remove the ability to fail, then we remove the ability to fully succeed... then what are we telling our children, that if we do something wrong or if things don't work out, the government will bail us out?