The $100 Billion Baseline

Who needs silly things like education and science anyways? I mean between cutting them or raising taxes, we gotta cut them. Its not like those programs need more money to become effective.

Its awful. This country should be putting more money into education and science. We’re in the middle teens to mid-20s in the world in these catagories.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading
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The answer isn’t less money, we should put more money into these programs. Cuts should come from the bloated defense budget to name one place and raising taxes to the late 1990s level. This would be a true investment in our future and would provide great dividends in human capital in the future.

So what’s worse, a government shutdown or the Obama budget that demolishes dozens of vital programs ands “shuts down” hundreds of billions of dollars of said “government”? We are spending billions on two wars of choice every week. There’s your “deficit reduction.”
http://www.sunstateactivist.org

“We’re in the middle teens to mid-20s in the world in these catagories.”
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And in the top 2 in what we spend.
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Hint:

It’s not how much we spend but how we spend it!

It’s not how much we spend but how we spend it!
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I could almost agree. Like I don’t think funding 2 wars right now fits into our budget. If we are broke then we are broke bring the troops home. Of course reality is not that simple though.

“But the chasm is likely to grow wider”
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AND seems like the better conjunction to use here if you’re trying to highlight a bad situation’s tendency to get worse.

“The issue is not whether they’re good programs…they’re good programs. The issue is we’re broke.”
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“Good programs” should also include defense spending, but I guess that’s just TOO good for them. ;(

What happened to the cost of those two wars from 2001 – 09?

He said programs to avoid saying people. The issue is not whether they’re good people. They are good people. We are just broke. Sorry.

The baseline figure alone has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate. But the freshman class, unlike Boehner, have the luxury of tossing out figures without regard to the difficulties of shepherding a critical bill across the line.

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Seriously? You are going to count your chicks before they have even been hatched? Hmmmmm
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Ummmmmmmmmmmm, the power of the Tea Party. I think this is what libtards have been fearing so much over the past year or so.
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Isn’t democracy great?!!!!

1.1, you’re right that spending doesn’t equal results. The Los Angeles School District spends $30,000 a year per student and manages to graduate 40%. Congratulations on those that made it through the liberal education model.
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It’s such a formula for success.

Oh, and Alex, my young naive friend, watch and learn what REAL “Community Organizing” is all about.

Wow, and I thought that $13,000 was high in my area per student. Are the teachers paid like pop stars?

The troops deserve the best for sure. One of my best friends is a marine and I wouldn’t want him to have defective equipment, but defense spending can be streamlined.

Eliminate no bid contracts. State of the Art does not necessarily mean better, there needs to be better decisions on what weapons systems are purchased and then the contractors need to be held to deadlines.

Plus raising taxes to pay for this stuff while cutting down on the war in Iraq (which is trending downward anyways) will generate a lot of revenue and savings.

What’s the matter guys – no date tonight??

teachers paid like pop stars, that’s hysterical. or the fact that LA has a higher cost of living might factor into it. just sayin.

Yes, more spending does not necessarily mean better. But more money needs to be spent on education, especially in under served areas. This in turn will help break the cycle of poverty and turn people who are more likely to use welfare and not pay taxes into taxpayers and self providers. I would think that would appeal to conservatives. For instance, Teach for America is a fantastic program whose funding needs to be increased.

Private sectors are not the answer because they have no incentive to spend money on under served areas. They can just bring in people who had the money to pay for private schools and private colleges. The government needs to help fund this otherwise these programs will die.

Someone once said that there is nothing on earth as close to eternal life as a temporary government program.

Federal job training programs:
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$18 billion spent on 47 separate programs.
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http://blog.heritage.org/?p=52034
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Got cuts?

nflfoghprn@4,

When people on the government dole start going in harm’s way to help defend the country then we can re-examine the value of their programs.

“Ummmmmmmmmmmm, the power of the Tea Party. I think this is what libtards have been fearing so much over the past year or so.”
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Are you f@cking kidding?! The Teatards, I mean the slobbering, brainwashed Republican base, are the best thing that could happen to the Democratic Party. Even as they move further to the corporatist right to comfort the comfortable and kick their liberal supporters, you lunatics are proudly driving your party right off the electoral cliff. Do you really think that voters are going to reward the Republicans for trying to eviscerate domestic programs that benefit citizens’ daily lives while keeping corporate welfare and tax breaks for the rich? I love you brain-dead, self-important little idiots, I really do.

Our soldiers are “on the government dole,” @sshole.

End the wars. Eliminate Medicare Advantage as well as private insurance companies having control over medicaid. Eliminate most federal tax deductions like mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Cut congressional pay by a third, eliminate most of their “allowances” and replace the “allowances” with a reimbursement program where they can get reimbursed for certain expenses after the expense had already been paid out of pocket.
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I’ve just cut millions from the federal budget and didn’t hardly touch “entitlements” except to return medicare/medicaid to the programs they were prior to the insurance industries hijacking them.

I’m having a hard time finding good data, but as near as I can tell, America’s spending per pupil is about the same compared to Canada (keep in mind, different currencies, but still). Strangely, Canada’s teacher salaries are notably lower – by like 30% – even though it’s performance on a global scale is still in the top 10.

So, you find the absolute worst example, then paint millions of other schools to be the exact same, then use that as your reasoning for eliminating public education altogether.

Why don’t you go look at the absolute worst private school and use that as a comparison? I bet you can find some nice private school principles in prisons here and there.

Next you’ll be ranting about how tap water should be illegal to drink because it is unfairly competing with bottled water. Maybe you can find a town that has a horrific water treatment plant that cost the town even more than bottled water! That would prove it, right?

Yep, highest paid teachers in the country. New schools, lots of new bond issues, and lots of illegal aliens.

So, you find the absolute worst example, then paint millions of other schools to be the exact same, then use that as your reasoning for eliminating public education altogether.
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Morris,
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No one’s ever accused this crew of being guilty of “intellectual honesty”.
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They have an axe to grind…

What’s the matter guys – no date tonight??
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They most certainly do… with someone named Harry Palm.
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I’d tell them to just “get a grip” but I think that’s the general idea.

If you look at the budget numbers for FY10…
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*Spending is 38% above revenues (3456-2162 billion)
*Defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Interest payments combine to a total of 69% of the Federal Budget (or all but 31%)
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In other words, if you remove EVERY discretionary spending program – both mandatory and non-mandatory, the funding of both wars, the White House, Congress, the Judicial system, education, NASA, EPA, SEC, intelligence, FBI, on-and-on the list goes, you still are missing 7% of the pie.
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BTW: The Bush Tax Cuts don’t solve the problem. The Bush Tax cuts are estimated at 3.7 trillion over 10 years – so we’ll use 370 billion per year. That brings revenues up to 2532 changing the ratio to about 73% (or all but 27%).
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Also, all of discretionary spending is still only 19%
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Let’s also toss out the 162 billion for the OCO for FY2010 (which Mark Thompson posted below) – brings us to 3294 spending and 76% ratio. So, I suppose it’s plausible that by dropping medicare advantage overhauling medicaid, and removing those deductions – none of which sound like they come close to the 162 billion the OCO is costing – you might get to 81% and then be able to drop all discretionary spending, but that seems…..ridiculous.
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At some point, you’re going to have to cut one of those 4 programs or raise taxes or any combination thereof. Any conversation that doesn’t include that discussion is just asking for failure.

shepherdwong@4.4.
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Say that to a serviceman’s face, Wong. I am sure that would be happy to supply an attitude adjustment for you.
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There is no federal employee more deserving of their pay than the military. They are not on the dole, sparky. They earn their pay unlike the vast majority of time servers and clock watchers in the bowels of federal buildings.
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People on the dole are those who receive the handout of their neighbors hard earned cash. Some may be in real need and some are just freeloaders.
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Considering the level of invective you employ when the subject of the dole is brought up, I suspect we know just where you fit in.

shepherdwong@5.2,
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“…are the best thing that could happen to the Democrat party.”
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One more election cycle of the Tea Party being the best thing to happen to the Democrat Party and the party will go the way of the Whigs.

I never could understand why the big corporations need the gov’t to train their workers. How did big business manage to convince lawmakers that it was not their responsibility?

“It saddens me that I’m sitting in rooms arguing about cutting $10 million off this food program and $20 million off that electricity program… Nibbling around the edges” is unacceptable… “We should be talking about bigger things.”
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Fred Kaplan in Slate (link) identified $382 billion of the 2010 military budget that was not “spending to support overseas conflicts, for instance in Iraq, Afghanistan” nor soldier’s pay and support. He claims “Most of this $382 billion consists of weapons systems—combatant ships, fighter jets, submarines, heavy armored vehicles…” I’m sure that number is bigger in the 2011 proposed budget.
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“It should be subject to the same discipline— the same line-by-line, page-by-page analysis— as the rest of the budget.”

forgottenlord..Are there other benefits, like retirement and health insurance, that could make up the difference between the expenditures in the systems?

“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined. 
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Our foreign policy is based on an illusion: that we are actually paying for it. What we are doing is borrowing and printing money to maintain our presence overseas. Americans are seeing the cost of this irresponsible approach as their own communities crumble and our economic decline continues.”
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Ron Paul -link

@4.5.. Some are in real need and some may just be freeloaders. Fixed it for you! Prove it is wrong.

rwbbinla@4.6,
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Not a problem. I can go with that too.

I agree with this post.

The Bush tax cuts not only don’t solve the problem, they caused the problem. Bush was handed a federal budget that was at least moving in the right direction toward fiscal responsibility, and we were sold a bill of goods about it being “our” money, and that any surplus (even though there really wasn’t one — it was all smoke and mirrors), should be returned to the people, rather than used to start paying down the federal debt.

10 years ago when George W. Bush took office, the U.S. fiscal condition was in very good condition. After having been left with skyrocketing deficits and a $5.5 trillion National Debt(which had risen from less than a $1 trillion when Reagan took office), Clinton raised taxes on the top 2%, the economy took off, 23 million new jobs were created, he left office with 4 consecutive budget surpluses, and the National Debt was predicted by the CBO to be paid off in 10 years.

What happened? Two huge tax cuts, two unpaid for wars, an unpaid for Medicare prescription drug program, and degregulation-mania that fueled the Wall Street fraud that caused a near Depression. And a doubling of the National Debt.

A new president takes over in the middle of the collapse of the American economy, with the unpaid wars still going, the Medicare drug program still not paid for, the tax cuts still in place, and trying to fight a near Depression with one hand tied behind his back because of GOP obstruction and dealing with it all with a huge National Debt. Something even FDR didn’t have to worry about.

And now that the GOP, that has done nothing but sink this country economically over the last 30 years, wants to double down on their “trickle-down economics” again. But now, their previous policies have so damaged the economy that they’ve put the whole country in crisis. All in an attempt to return American back to the Gilded Age” of the late 1880s-early 1900s when workers had few rights and the moneyed elite ran the country. In other words, to overturn the New Deal.

And they’ve done a great job of it. With the acquiesence of the American people who responded to the modern GOP message of “Ive got mine, F#@k you!

In fairness, much of the growth during the Clinton years was the unsustainable dot-com boom. But other than that, you’ve pretty much nailed the problem.

Pint, you might enjoy Ian Welsh eviscerating a typical piece of hackery in the Financial Times:

A man who can call for the slashing of entitlements without mentioning the military or progressive taxation while citing Christianity as his authority is a man who should spend less time worrying about the public good and more about the state of his own soul.

How’s the eye of that needle looking?”

Link

Thanks jcapan. Interestingly enough, this Terrence Keeley has a long history at UBS:
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From 1994 until July 2010 Mr. Keeley was a Senior Managing Director at UBS with relationship oversight responsibilities for central bank and sovereign clients globally. As one of the bank’s senior marketing officers, he was responsible for all transactional correspondence, credit exposures, debt underwritings/restructurings and advisory efforts with hundreds of multilateral organizations, ministries of finance, central banks and sovereign wealth funds. (link)
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As perhaps a principle driving force, I’m sure he did very well during the derivative-fueled gouging of the housing market while guiding clients to the best tax havens available (is he one of the executives that were advised not to enter the US as they might face arrest?). Maybe Phil Gramm took him under his wing.
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He must laugh to the point of wetting himself when he claims that god wants us to cut entitlements.

You can spend money all day long. If the student doesn’t want to learn because of peer pressure, or they just don’t value an education, you are wasting time and money. What do kids in the big city value? Pop culture, gangs, partying, whatever the latest movie influences them to do, the clothes, the music. THEY spend money on that. THAT’S what they value. Until you change that culture to one that values an education, you are fighting a losing battle.
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“Like I don’t think funding 2 wars”
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It is hard to tell if you are being deliberately obtuse or just stupid. I clearly referred to how we spend the enormous amount of money we already spend on education. Maybe your response is a direct example of the products of our educational system in that you have trouble comprehending clear sentences?

So you agree, therefore, that parents need to take more responsibility for their children’s education? That it is unfair to punish teachers (the vast majority of whom give their all and truly care about the kids they teach) for circumstances outside their control? People continue to point to falling test scores and play the blame the teacher game, and yet you’ve just listed numerous things they have no control over.

I’ve skimmed the comments, so maybe I’ve missed it. The post doesn’t include a “budget blueprint” from the Republicans. Is there a link?.
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Saying “Cut spending” is not a blueprint. Neither are statements by individual members. The closest think we have is Ryan’s roadmap, which is incomplete, arithmetically challenged, and disavowed.
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It’s way past time for Boehner to show us the money. Babbling about how 40 billion is really 100 billion and threatening to kill Big Bird is not offering competing policy.

DIrks–
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If they’d just left the income tax structure alone, we’d be fine right now. The dot com boom may have been a windfall in terms of general economic growth and revenue to the Treasury, but we would have been in far better shape to weather the Greenspan real estate bubble had the Clinton income tax regime stayed in place.

freeinpa wrote: I clearly referred to how we spend the enormous amount of money we already spend on education.

No you didn’t! You wrote exactly: It’s not how much we spend but how we spend it!

If you think that is a clear reference you need to think again.

Actually, a lot of things caused the current short fall. The Bush tax cuts, two recessions, a failure to correct taxes after the first recession was over to bring back fiscal equality, two unfunded wars, an unfunded doubling of the military budget, an unfunded doubling of the intelligence budget, and an unfunded mandate in No Child Left Behind all come up as major factors. While Bush can’t be blamed for the fact that recessions hamper tax revenues, he can be blamed for removing the buffer in the budget to account for the possibility of recession (well, and for his part in the second recession).

So, WHEN is Time going to do the story about “starve the beast” or “How Republicans can deliberately run up the national debt by $11T so they can privatize the social entitlements… ”

Or ” How can we almost destroy the country’s financial future and endanger national security and make it look like the Democrats’ fault!”

The media, including Time, is suspiciously silent on this topic despite all the evidence available!

trying to fight a near Depression with one hand tied behind his back because of GOP obstruction and dealing with it all with a huge National Debt. Something even FDR didn’t have to worry about.

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Sorry people but this is just mindless whining. Obama didn’t inherit a near depression. That’s just your hormones acting up and Reagan with 13% inflation and a recession and a deficit had a far harder challenge than either FDR or Obama. Also Obama didn’t have a problem with the GOP. He had overwhelming majorities in both houses. What Obama has was zero economic or private sector experience and a Marxist world view. His stimulus failed and as a result he had the worst election results in 80 years. This current budget proposal highlights the fact he is not interested in cutting spending or the deficit and he will most assuredly have an unpleasant result in 2012.

Governor Cuomo because he proposed a budget with significant spending cuts has the higher approval rating of any governor in NYS history. Governor Christie, a combative budget cutter is also enjoying unusually high polls for a republican in a deep blue state.

Obama is obviously putting it on the House to enact cuts so the MSM can then accuse them of starving children but his isn’t 1995. There was no Fox then and Talk radio was a fraction of it’s current reach. Limbaugh himself now draws an audience larger than all 3 networks combined. Fox draws an audience larger than all 3 of it’s competitors combined and the internet has become the goto source for analysis.

There are also dozens of other substantive differences. There was no tea party in 1995. This isthe most powerful 3rd party force in US political history which arose from nothing in reaction to Obama’s radical spending. With the coming budget at a stunning 25% of GDP they’ll have no problem remaining dominant. The big question for Obama’s budget is how expects to get a dozen senators up for re-election in 2012 to vote for it. It’s career suicide.

. Bush was handed a federal budget that was at least moving in the right direction toward fiscal responsibility,

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That’s easily proven false. Bush inherited a collapsing economy, an asset bubble and a series of accounting scandals that were going to result in a reversal of massive tax collections, many the result of capital gains frauds. The excess taxes collected in the late 90′s and 2000, didn’t just end but reversed in the from of tax losses many of which are still carrying forward. In addition to all of those disasters we had 9/11 which caused a sharp increase in security costs as well as Afghanistan. All of these things were beyond GWBs control. Even with all of this GWBs deficit of !60B in 2007 was less than Clintons $164B in 1995, far under on a per capita GDP basis.

What you are going to find is the tea party will make 2007, less Afghan war funding, the base year for budgeting moving forward.

You are going to have an impossible time blaming Bush for deficits when Obama racks up the 3 largest in history in only 3 years.

He just submitted a budget with a $1.5T deficit. He’s not even trying. Obviously he wants the GOP to try and then accuse them of starving children. This is so not 1995. Ryan already promised there will not be a shutdown. Moreover look to 2004 as an inflection point where the MSM lost the ability to drive the narrative. They ignored the SBVs yet they were the driving factor in that election.

Bush ran a $160B deficit in 2007 and Obama’s 3rd budget deficit is almost 10x’s as large. Apparently liberals think that because he was unable to pass tax increases he should ‘get even’ by not cutting spending. Interestingly he could not pass tax increases with huge majorities because those up for election knew it was career suicide. So it will be again. No way Ben Nelson approved Obama’s budget.

The Teatards, I mean the slobbering, brainwashed Republican base, are the best thing that could happen to the Democratic Party.

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Are you aware there was an election last November and in that election the GOP has it’s best results in 80 years?

Are you aware there are more GOP members of the House than at anytime since before FDR?

In my great state of PA the GOP won every statewide race including Gov, Senate, AG, Treasurer, picked up 5 house seats and own both housesof the state legislator. Next door Ohio did the same.

Just an example of why this isn’t 1995 is the very capable conservative blogger at the Washington Post

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Why have a press conference like THAT?
By Jennifer Rubin

President Obama had a hard day yesterday. Conservatives, the press and even some Democrats hammered him for an unserious budget. So you can imagine the wheels turning in the Obama brain trust: Have a press conference and recover the narrative!

The problem is you then have to say something to dispel the negative storyline (i.e. the president doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about real fiscal repair). He tells us the Debt Commission is a “framework for discussion.” What is that supposed to mean? (Answer: I’m not leading on entitlements.) He tells us that “symbolic cuts” would do great damage to the economy. What?! I suppose if they aren’t really symbolic, they might have some impact, but didn’t we pretty much dispel the notion that heaps of government spending creates prosperity or jobs? (Answer: Obama is still sipping Kool Aid from the Keynesian punch bowl.) He says we aren’t going to be “running up the credit card” but his own budget adds $7.2 trillion to the debt over 10 years. He says he wants to tackle tax reform, but his only suggestion on taxes in the budget was a $1.5 trillion tax hike.

It was an unconvincing and uninspired performance because he has a message that isn’t defensible. You see, he really isn’t serious about real fiscal discipline.

Judging from the initial press reports he didn’t do himself any good. The New York Times observed:

“You guys are pretty impatient. If something doesn’t happen today, then the assumption is that it’s not going to happen,” Mr. Obama said. “This is not a matter of ‘you go first’ or ‘I go first.’ This is a matter of everybody having a serious conversation about where we want to go and then ultimately everybody getting into that boat at the same time so it doesn’t tip over.”

Yet Mr. Obama offered few specifics about how and when serious negotiations might begin over entitlement programs.

One more note: His most egregious departure from reality came not on the budget, but on Egypt. He proclaimed: “History will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt that we were on the right side of history.” This is preposterous to anyone but the most determined Obama sycophant. He did virtually nothing to push Hosni Mubarak toward reform for two years, and once the protests began the White House became a muddle of multiple voices, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggesting at points that Mubarak wasn’t and shouldn’t go anywhere. The administration never publicly called for Mubarak’s departure. In short, the Obama team followed and did not lead; its support for regime change was in doubt throughout the process. Unfortunately, Obama wasn’t asked if he had been on the right side of history in June 2009 when he largely ignored the Green Movement’s uprising.

Obama and his advisers seem to have convinced themselves that most problems are a matter of “messaging” or “communication.” But when Obama communicates a flawed message or misrepresents facts, he compounds his own difficulties, making it that much more difficult for his allies to defend him and all the more easy for opponents to demonstrate that he’s not leading on the crucial issues of the day

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RDW – I was going to cut off the comments about Egypt but they support the notion the media in 2011 is so vastly different than in 1995. With search engines and blogs it’s so easy to fact check Obama. It’s impossible to him to sell any narrative he was a driver in Egypt. He can’t even claim to have been influential.

On Deficit, President Obama Talks Big, But Goes Slow and Small

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Even TIME won’t defend Obama.

threatening to kill Big Bird is not offering competing policy.

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Big Bird will do fine. He’s a celebrity. He never should have been on welfare in the 1st place.

Our soldiers are “on the government dole,” @sshole.

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Dole – Charitable dispensation of goods, especially money, food, or clothing.

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There is a reason the military is by far the most respected institution in American life with about 70% support. There is a reason why the parties, academia and the media are below 20% in those same polls.

The fact is people don’t like elitist scumbags. I love it when they try to smear the military. It always blows up in their faces. When John Kerry told a student ‘study up or you’ll end up in Iraq”, he was merely parroting liberal dogma that the American soldier is a cut below average. They’re there because they didn’t have ‘choices’. It was only justice that even this dense Senator realized his Presidential ambitions were over due to backlash where so few of his peers were willing to go on record agreeing with him while clearly in agreement.

Kerry made that common political mistake of speaking a liberal truth.

RDW…. your post is just plain NOT true. First of all, when the DEMs took control of Congress they tried to alter the budgets Bush submitted for FY 2007 and 2008! The GOP senators filibustered any changes. For that reason, no complete budgets were passed except for defense. Some “continuing resolutions” were passed which kept spending to the previous year’s level, Those were Bush budgets!!

As for FY 2009, it ended on Sept 30, 2009. It had a $500B deficit BEFORE Bush added TARP. So, on the day Pres. Obama was sworn in, the budget ALREADY had a $1.3T deficit— and that is bush’s debt! Since the FY ended with a deficit of $1.8T, then 4th grade arithmetic shows that Pres.Obama added about $500B to the budget, in a time of SEVERE crisis!! FY 2010, ended with a deficit of $1.6T, again, in a time of crisis! (also a decrease in the deficit) THEREFORE, Pres. Obama could NOT have added any more than about $2T to the debt, not counting this year.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm

That pales in comparison to the $11T in debt run up by reagan/bush/bush thru tax cuts and overspending. If they hadnt done that, we wouldnt HAVE a budget problem Or a debt problem! Neither would we be having this conversation! And to think that the Republicans ran up all that debt DELIBERATELY to create the budget crisis we now have!

http://www.dlc.org/print.cfm?contentid=251788 <==liberal

http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/06/tax-cuts-republicans-starve-the-beast-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html <=== conservative

My suggestion is that the US cut the $3 billion it sends to Israel every year or is that off the table as well as are the Defense Budget and the Wars?

Some of your points are certainly valid such as Obama inheriting a huge deficit. However I didn’t write the rules. Bush came into office late Jan 2001 and the recession stated 6 weeks later. It’s called by liberals and Time columnists the Bush recession. At least Obama was in the Senate and a part of the process that created the excess spending and poor banking regulation.

The fact is Obama just submittted a budget with a $1.5T deficit and more spending for absurd things like NPR. This is HIS budget. It’s an astonishing 10% of GDP largely because spending is a shocking 25% of GDP. Obama has no defense for this thing.

The aid to Israel was negotiated by Jimmy Carter as part of the camp david accords. The same amount goes to Egypt.

“Sorry people but this is just mindless whining. Obama didn’t inherit a near depression. That’s just your hormones acting up and Reagan with 13% inflation and a recession and a deficit had a far harder challenge than either FDR or Obama. ”

This is why any decent and honest person should NEVER put any credibility into what you say. You’re a lying buffoon and a dishonest hack of the worst kind.

Did you know that the US ranks 2nd (behind Finland) in the amount of money spent per student in grades K-12? We also rank in about the middle when it comes to test scores vs the rest of the world. More money to the teachers Union isn’t going to get it done. We need reform of education, including tenure and cirriculum. How about vouchers? Ask any student who is attending a university if the cost of his education has gone up.. it has, but the quality of it has not. It is not suprising, when you have no competition and have a law forcing people to use your product alone, with limited oversite, that the provider gets bloated and lazy. If you, as a parent, don’t like what is happening in your school, what can you do about it? Nothing.
More money won’t fix it.