Gasp! Maybe the President Is Right?! Time to Trim the Fat
Ok, so I am not a supporter of our current President in any way, shape, or form. I think he has done more to damage this country and to destroy our economy and founding principles than the worst of all liberal presidents combined. Even I, who knew he would be horribly destructive to our nation, could not have imagined how much constitutional carnage he could create in these few short years. I just pray we can survive what time he has left in office.
Having said that, I want to comment on a statement he made in response to a man saying he could not afford health insurance even on the “health insurance exchanges”. The President said that perhaps this man should look at his budget: cell phone bill, cable bill, etc. The conservative community jumped all over the comment as if he was completely crazy.
Although I think the President is out of touch as it concerns how hard the month to month paycheck life is and how hard it is for any family to add even the smallest obligation to that monthly budget, I did not think that the idea of looking at our monthly budgets so as to cut out the luxuries was that bad of an idea. That is certainly what we have had to do as food and gas prices have shot up. That is what we had to do when we went from two incomes to one income while adding the HUGE expense of children.
Now what some may consider a luxury others may consider a necessity. Perhaps it is time to give away the family pet if you cannot afford to put food on the table for your kids. Maybe we need to dump our home internet service and use the public library so that we have that extra cash to put gas in the car. For most people who are being forced to add health insurance (which I completely disagree with in case you didn’t know that; nor do I think the government should subsidize those who cannot afford it…but that is another article), it would probably take a combination of things in order to pay for this newly added government imposed budgetary necessity.
Unfortunately our society has lived off Keynesian Economics for so long that the idea that we live within our means is completely unheard of. The government does not live within its means, which did make what the President said a bit comical, but again, I did not think it was a bad idea. Most families carry so much debt that they cannot keep up anymore. We all have excess in our budgets that could be cut so that we could save for retirement or give to charity, etc. It is a matter of priorities. As we face increasingly challenging economic times caused by this administration, let’s take the President’s advice (just this one time and just on this one issue) and look at our budgets and see where we can trim the fat.
Image: Courtesy of: http://www.vote29.com/newmyblog/archives/46292
