Am I Getting This Wrong?
Things don’t look so good out there on the budget front. If we (read: United States of America) are not in worse shape financially now than we have ever been before, I would be surprised. I am not confident we can recover.
Here’s a small sample of what I read this morning –
“Keller ISD is not going to be the same place after $16 million in cuts,” board President Cindy Lotton said at the budget workshop. (star-telegram.com)
California Governor Brown also has called for more than $12 billion in spending cuts to higher education, welfare programs, health services for the poor, in-home care, state parks and a wide array of other programs. (Associated Press)
The states of Arizona, New York, Missouri and Mississippi are also planning to raise the age limit to earn pension. (Times News World)
Texas is facing a $15 billion shortfall. ‘It’s a catastrophe. No financial aid for kids to go to college. No pre-kindergarten for kids to learn their numbers and their letters. Health and human services slashed,” said Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine. `’No Texan can be proud of this.”(The Huffington Post)
What I haven’t read:
The Executive Branch of the Federal Government is slashing a vacation or two from their quarterly schedule.
The U.S. Congress has voted to cut a few folks from the vast staff of each individual Senator and Representative.
The Federal Government has elected to sell approximately 1 trillion dollars worth of empty and/or unused real estate in Washington D. C. and return the money to the National Treasury.
Millions of dollars worth of stored office furniture (because each bureaucracy has to purchased “new” office furniture every year or two) will be sold to the highest bidder, and the money returned to the America tax-payer to whom it belongs.
White House re-furnishing, elaborate dinners and gatherings, ostentatious seasonal decorations, and ever-increasing staff personnel, will be scaled back to match the reality true of most homes in America.
Federal employees will be required to find productive work of some kind during a portion of each eight hour shift. Postal employees, for example, endlessly loitering around the Post Office, will be discouraged. Breaks and lunch will be limited to a few hours each day.
I could be wrong, or “off base,” regarding all of this, but I think not. And it is not just the Feds that I am worried about. My Pastor took a full hour and a half for lunch one day last week. He’s dangerously close to incurring my wrath as well.