Next Budget? Try 3.6 trillion

The link's not showing up. Would you mind a quick edit?

Defense increase probably isn't going to break the bank. The money going to the soldiers' families should be a nice boost and I don't think that there were any unnecessary projects rolling down the line. They cut the fat pretty hard last year.

I thought he was giving up the health care plan. There's no way we should be worrying about that right now. His plan isn't that impressive either from what I remember.

Education has been lacking, so yeah, that's good. We're just throwing money at a problem though. Curriculum needs a serious change to make it better on the whole.

I can't believe that they are still pushing for alternative energy subsidies. The ethanol market just collapsed and its facing incredible inefficiency because of their subsidies (which also screwed up the corn market...which screwed up dairy and meat). If they want to help, then they should just focus on converting government buildings to use things like solar and wind (since that's actually an investment). Throwing more money into the market is just going to cause it to unnaturally swell. It may be surprising, but profitable energy technologies tend to arise just fine on their own. Can you imagine how many engineers are trying to make better solar energy batteries? They do it because they know that they're going to make a fortune if they are the ones who figure it out.

Ye well OBama is trying to do it fast, he is a very nice person and would do anything for USA I think, I watch him on news and TV shows, he is a very good person, better than G.W.Bush for me.

The problem is we need trustworthy guy to be in the oversight part of this stimulas plan. In other words , people that arent in the government loop.

Well, the CBO's non-partisan. I'm sure they'll put some stuff together soon. Most of the money is fairly well defined though from the breakdown estimates I've seen so far.

omey, why the problem with the health care fund? I assume that you are a person in good health, and with medical insurance. As a person with neither, I have an entirely different view of our medical system.

Obama wants USA to go fast as it was going. that's why he thought of something like this. and if he has decided then i think its going to help the country. he is a mastermind.

Well, the government really could wipe out their debts, at least within the country if they wanted to. All it takes is some clearing of the records, and then we can start fresh...

Seriously though, it's going to take a big budget to get us back on the right track.

I actually doubt that it will take much spending. The market seems to be recovering nicely. Citigroup is reporting a real profit for the past two months (I really wish I would have bought some of their shares back when they were 99 cents a piece). The bond market is recovering. It seems like some of the worst doom and gloom was just undue panic. It will be tough, but we probably are close to hitting the bottom now. I doubt that Obama's plan will do much to help.

As far as the health care plan goes, it's just pointless spending. I also worry about what he's doing. I've heard that he's trying to push through a bill to make it legal and subsidized to have generics manufactured before the patent runs out on a drug. This is altruistic and will help people, but it will kill the drug company's profits and reduce the incentive for development.

I don't think I would blame him for offering medicare as a cheap-buy in insurance option. This would hopefully show that there is a market for cheap but practical insurance and a company would swoop in to cover it. The current medical insurance field has been greatly inflated by the tax deductions that are offered. More and more companies supported inflated prices because they didn't care. It was a write-off.

I think that more money should be poured into electric car technology since they are allready starting to do that in China and it is a very doable technology since battery strength has become greater than it ever has been.

Electric cars would be a nice step, if for no other reason than to lower the usage of petroleum. It would be nice to have good reserves of petrochemicals for the future.

It's just now becoming economically viable. We should see some nice jumps in the future.

There is also some interesting advances in ethanol. Someone just patented and designed a home-kit for ethanol brewing. It's basically just as big as two washers on top of each other. You put in sugar and let it run for several hours. Once its done, you have ethanol and pure water, nothing else. It wouldn't be cheaper right now, but the designer is working on importing sugar from Mexico that isn't suitable for eating. It works just fine and is about 1/6 of the price of regular sugar. Enough nerding out on my end though.

The Parakeet said:

Education has been lacking, so yeah, that's good. We're just throwing money at a problem though. Curriculum needs a serious change to make it better on the whole.

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I couldn't agree with you more there. The District of Columbia spends more per capita than any state, has schools that are falling apart, and except for a few special schools, doesn't provide much of an education. So money isn't the solution.

I think we have an attitude problem across the board, and simply have to make school harder and expect more of our children. So whatever we put in the budget is just baling wire and chewing gum. Maybe in a few years we'll get something serious.