Question by Her Highness: A Question About Government, Family Budget?
When a family budget shortfalls, family budget must cut spending. Increased revenue in most cases is not an option. They must live within the parameters of their income. Cutting the family budget consist of spending less. Eliminate charitable giving, spending less on food, recreation, travel, housing, utilities, things of that sort.
When the government has budget shortfalls, they spend more? The parties continue, they continue to give money away, the vacations, travel, and all other expenditures continue. In many cases at an accelerated pace.
Why isn’t the government expected to follow the same guidelines as it citizens are expected to follow?
This is a problem that has existed for many years, under Republicans, Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives. It is not an ideological problem, or a problem of political parties.
Is it too much to ask of politicians to quit running up the debt?
Is it really a wise thing to borrow more money, when we can’t pay the money we already owe?
Best answer:
Answer by A Voice of Reason
Government has to look at the best interests of the economy. If the economy is going downhill, the last thing you want is the government taking more money out of the economy in the form of spending cuts, which only makes the economy worse.
Give your answer to this question below!
Government cannot run its budget like a family, because government is responsible to multitudes of people; a family is responsible only to itself.
When an emergency happens, government needs the flexibility to respond. The tornadoes in Joplin are a good example. Should the government be forced to cut spending in other areas just to provide emergency response to the citizens of Joplin? How long would that take, to debate the cuts in Congress, write the bills, go to committee to reconcile the bills, debate the reconciled bill, pass it in both houses and get the Pres to sign it, while the need is immediate? It’s not practical.
If a family living on $ 60K suffered a medical emergency that left them with a $ 250K bill, how could they effect a “dollar for dollar” cut to pay the bill, like people want the government to do?
I agree with you that government budgets need cut, but then we run into ideological differences on where the cuts should take place. Republicans want to cut social programs like Planned Parenthood, but not federal payments to “faith based” organizations. Huh?
Government needs the ability to deal with emergencies that effect the populace. It’s valuable to debate just how much “flexibility” is necessary or sustainable, and that’s what we’re doing now. But it’s a mistake to correlate government budgets with family budgets.