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Budgets are vital to our nation’s survival

To the editor:

Let’s talk about budgets. Just about everything in this world involving money requires budgeting. It may be as simple as something like; I have have a certain amount of money coming in, and so I need to gear all my expenditures to say within that income. Now, my expenses are everything I need to pay, in order to provide food, clothing, shelter and incidentals, for myself, and my family.

Incidentals include all those expenses, that we all know will occur, and some it seems will happen about every pay period. Now if my budget has ample income to pay these necessities, and also can afford to pay me some (savings) out of each pay, my family can live comfortably, and by our retirement time, have retirement income, own a home and hopefully have some money in the bank.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? There is one problem. Many people can’t, or don’t wish to live within their means. A lot of individuals get trapped in so-called easy credit. These persons may be earning a good living but can’t afford that special item they desire. They can, however, afford (they think) a $30 a month or so credit card payment, and so they buy that special item.

It’s easy, and so the same scenario is repeated the next month. It isn’t long before money budgeted for necessities is needed for credit card payments. The plan then becomes to buy necessities on the credit card and pay an ever-increasing credit card payment.

Soon the credit card payment becomes unmanageable as the credit limit is reached, but the monthly payment still must be paid. At this point a responsible family will, if possible, get a loan at the best rate possible, at the lowest payment possible, to pay off this debt, even though they probably can’t even recall much that they had purchased to max out their credit.

Now whatever the loan payment amounts to, it is definitely not accounted for in their original budget. So, in order to balance their budget they need to cut expenses (bite the bullet.) Otherwise more credit cards, loans or sale of property will be needed, and of course with that comes more loan and interest payments.

No good end can come of this behavior. Our government represents one huge family: US.

Like the example, we could cut our losses, live within our income, cut our expenditures and gradually pay our debts, but we won’t! For much too long, politicians, from both parties have added programs and expenses that our budget could not afford.

A lot of the programs, tax breaks and giveaways were concocted for political advantage, and after an expenditure is in place it is almost impossible to rescind. Remember that most citizens want budget cuts, but not any cuts that affect them.

I believe that if overlapping and totally unneeded programs were eliminated, along with the many pork programs, we could begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I blame both parties for this mess, but I especially blame President Obama. I believe he has no intention, nor cares about budget balancing. For his first two years he made no effort to submit a budget in his controlled House of Representatives. During these last two years, his controlled Senate has refused to allow several reasonable (good start) House bills to even be brought up, considered, amended and voted on by the Senate.

We now borrow 40 cents to every dollar we spend, and as in my example, the debt keeps going up, the payment keeps going up, and we’ll need to borrow more money just to pay the interest on the debt.

Please contact your representatives from both parties and tell them that his madness has got to stop, as we are quickly becoming a third-world country!

Remember: Ever since the 1940s, the USA has meant survival for the third world. Who can help when we fall?

John Kauffman

Belleville

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