I recently read this news story about the $17 Billion dollars that President Obama is seeking to cut out of the U.S. budget.  Here’s the link to the news story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090507/pl_nm/us_obama_budget

On the surface, $17 Billion seems like a huge amount of money.  The problem is that the government now is so ridiculously big that we’re dealing in the Trillions for our national budget, and these numbers just don’t “compute” in real-world terms.

To properly understand this $17 Billion “cut” in the budget, we need to draw an analogy with a typical American family budget:

Government Budget = $3.55 Trillion
Trying to “trim” the budget by = $17 Billion
$17 Billion is less than 0.5% of the budget!!

Average Family = $60,000  (an easy number for this example)
What is 0.5% of $60,000??  =  $300

Okay, so to put this in perspective, if you have an average family income of $60,000 you would need to cut roughly $300 from your ANNUAL budget.  Which further breaks down into $25/mo.  Could you find a way to save $25/mo?  I’m SURE you could.  Actually, in this difficult economy, how many of you have cut MUCH MORE than that already?  I know we have!  And I can almost guarantee that the average American family has far less “waste” or “unnecessary expenses” in their budget already.

C’mon government, you HAVE to do better than this.  I’d expect at least a 2%-5% cut if you REALLY had the desire for change!  I haven’t yet done much research, but I’ll bet the government is GROWING faster than 0.5% every year, which means this isn’t really a CUT is it?  No, its actually just a reduction in the amount of growth.

Let’s all show the government how its done!  Be frugal, be industrious, pay as little tax as you legally can, get out of debt, operate under a balanced budget and be giving.

One of my inspirations is Dave Ramsey.   I suggest those who don’t know Dave get acquainted with his ideas on money.  Principles I wish I had learned better awhile ago, but am happy to be following now.  If ONLY we could get the government to attend Dave’s “Financial Money Makeover!!”