How Would the Federal Government run your Household Budget?

[Jerome Trent]

I know many of you have been hearing about the Federal Government’s budget lately.  Congress is supposedly working on various proposals to deal with the fact that the Federal Government is spending more money than it takes in through Federal income taxes and whatever other revenue sources they have.  It is my understanding that the revenue that the Federal government will collect from its citizens is about $2.7 Trillion dollars.  I also understand that they expect to spend about $3.7 Trillion dollars.

I would like to put this into perspective.  I think it is difficult for most of us to have a good understanding of the effect of these extremely big numbers.  So let’s downsize this to something closer to a household budget that you deal with all the time.

I’m going to use a household budget of $50,000.  Some of you may make less and some of you may make more but I think you can relate to this budget.  So $50,000 is our revenue that we take in for our household budget.  Then based on the Federal governments expected expenses, our expected expenses would be about $68,518.  That would mean that we would be spending about $18,518 that we don’t have.  Since we don’t have it that means it would have to be a loan or on a credit card, maybe multiple credit cards.  Is this starting to become clear to you?

Now, I think you might be able to handle a budget like that for one year of unexpected expenses and then work your way through a recovery.  But let’s say your household budget worked more like the Federal government budget and the next year you still spent about $16,518 that you had to borrow or put on credit cards.  Now after two years you owe more than $32,000.  If you don’t do something to correct the problem, it’s just going to get worse every year.  In four years’ time, at this rate, your household budget would be in debt to the tune of about $66,000.

Now I ask you.  Is this how you run your household budget?  Is this the way you would want your Federal government to run its budget, which by the way is your money?  I don’t think so and it’s time for our Federal government to do something about it.

Of course you don’t want your taxes increased to cover their reckless spending.  So what has to take place?  Their reckless spending needs to be brought under control and it needs to happen soon before we go belly up.

I welcome your comments be they support or criticism.

Author: Jerome Trent

You can read more of Jerome’s blogs and comments at www.MoreDat.com