There is a lot of talk about the federal government deficits these days. Yes, we need to get that under control. One of the ways to do that is to reign in our obnoxious military spending. We spend many many times more per citizen on our military complex than any other country in the world. As a matter of fact we spend more than the rest of the world combined!!  If we reduced our spending to only ten times more per citizen than any other country we could cut more than $3 trillion dollars in ten years.  Yes, I am playing the same game here as those yahoos in Washington. In order to make the number sound larger I count ten years instead of just one like normal people.  I can play the same games as they do.

Another way is to roll back the drastic tax cuts given to those who make more than $1 million per year that were doled out by baby Bush’s administration. That would reduce the deficit by another couple trillion.  Instead we seem to want to do it on the backs of the poor. The latest spending bill decimated the Pell Grants. This is money to help those whose families earn less than $25,000 (that’s per year not ten years (ha)) go to college.  It seems like we as a country would rather keep the poor in their place rather than asking the rich to hold off on that new $200,000 car for another year. The inscription on the Statue of LIberty says something like “give my your huddled masses..”  Maybe we should add “and we will keep them that way”.

There is a deficit that no one talks about these days and that is the U.S. trade deficit.  We got good news today that the trade deficit might only be $1 trillion this year. It is usually much higher. So we send  about a trillion dollars a year more of out the country than we bring back in with our sales abroad.  Just where does all that money go? Shouldn’t we be just as concerned about this deficit as the federal one?

But I am just a simple fellow, what do I know….