By The President announced today a $15 billion spending reduction over the next three years. While I applaud the President for heading in the right direction, Congress has over $500 billion in stimulus money that it still plans to spend. While discretionary spending has increased by more than 20% in the past two years, we should use the leftover stimulus money and pay down our debt which is at $1.3 trillion and scheduled to balloon to $6 trillion in the next few years. In 2009 alone, overall spending increased by 18%, or $536 billion.
The President’s three-year freeze on ‘non-discretionary funding’ only affects 17% of the budget and the fiscal budget for 2010 (which runs from October 2010 – September 2011) will cut some programs, while increasing funding for others.
It is no secret that we are living in difficult economic times, but getting Americans back to work should be our number one priority. I am glad the President has begun to see his party’s mistakes, but the outline he laid out for our nation needs to go further. I believe you need to look at a person’s actions, not words. We expect actions, not more excuses or lofty words.
