Obama and the Spending Deal

After reading an article from time.com called “Obama Says Spending Deal Close, GOP Doesn’t” I have a bit to say about this dilemma. The priorities of the House are definitely not for the best. Cutting $61 BILLION, yes, billion from domestic accounts such as, “administration priorities such as education…” is absolutely ridiculous. Seeing that our nation is willing to take away such a great amount of money from our education system is ludicrous. How are we supposed to become a better nation if our education is going to decrease? Yes, I agree that government spending needs to be cut in order for our economy to recover. However, WHY does education need to be cut to that great extent?  The article mentions that “The Labor Department reported that companies added 216,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 8.8 percent.” I feel that this is a very good improvement on economy and I agree hands down with Obama when he says that “Given the encouraging news we received today on jobs, it would be the height of irresponsibility to halt our economic momentum because of the same old Washington politics.” I think the compromise needs to be reached soon and yes, if the budget negotiations do happen to break down, the government would definitely be halted and the economy’s recovery would be greatly jeopardized. I agree with a comment from the article by Kevin Smith that, “If they are taking EPA riders off the table, then we’re certainly not ‘close’ to a deal” Unfortunately he is right and an agreement needs to be reached fully. The first-termers of the Republicans show that they are ready to accept “some sort of compromise” because they didn’t follow the other Republican Paul Broun saying that “any bill with less than $61 billion was an insult” voting against it. I think this is a very smart move by the fresh Republicans; however, everyone needs to decide what compromise that they want. On a chart from the usgovernmentspending.com, it displays what percentage money is spend on. Defense being the highest at 25%, Health at 23%, Pensions at 21%, Welfare at 13% and remainder of 18%. I feel that we should lower the defense category. Why is our nation so concerned about what is going on in other countries and worrying so much about putting our guard up? We should definitely start focusing on fixing OUR country first, from the bottom up, in order to be a better nation.