As Americans we didn’t want to go over the fiscal cliff and in the end we did just that for a day and a half. Yet, Congress backtracked and made it seem like we didn’t. When we went over the cliff at the very beginning of the year, it not only affected education and health, but those who are serving for our safety and freedom. Our money spent for the military and how it has been spent these past few years is all over the map. Now Congress is buckling down and trying to control their spending. At the cost of the American people’s hard earned income, money is being spent in health care reform and cutting teachers pay. Cuts aren’t happening as fast, because Congress is so divided.

While running for re-election, President Obama promised the American people that he wouldn’t raise taxes and that was not his motive this term. This statement was made in his third and last debate in October 2012 with opponent Mitt Romney. Since that time, Congress hasn’t been to agree and pass the bills needed to bring spending into balance. By default, sequester was created in event of no agreements in Congress. This sequester has manually cut everything to a predetermined number and that is the budget. It seems that Obama’s plan of making the rich pay more taxes has failed. Obama has instead lowered taxes for the rich and raised them for the middle and the working class after he signed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, when he said the exact opposite earlier to the American people. President Obama promised that he would not raise taxes or cut budgets, and the money isn’t being used to funding the needs of the real problems America has.

Additionally, Obama is now on his fourth time cutting the military budget since he took office. Many people say that he didn’t need to promise anything to the American people about budget cuts and other critics say that it would’ve been good to go over the fiscal cliff. So why are the military cuts still happening but worse?

In the middle of March 2013 Head Minority Leader Steny Hoyer sat down with CNBC. He talked about how Democrats made a mistake by not going over the fiscal cliff, and if we had then we would have had a better standing view of how to debate the budget. He says the proposed ‘Ryan budget’ is just a dream and might be able to work. Less than 4 days later the Paul Ryan budget was passed by Congress. The budget will be balanced over the next ten years to help reduce the deficit.

Sequester cut $500 billion in military expenses. This wasn’t what we need to help the national debt or cut taxes. At the end of February, President Obama gave a speech explaining that the fiscal cliff will hurt the military. What did he say about our situation when it is worse than the ‘Great Depression’? “We will get through this” even though the military will be having to lay-off good people with families and others will have long furloughs of their military job. Those are the consequences and it just has to happen according to Obama to help the deficit.
If President Obama is letting off good people then how does that do make us look? The money is being cut from all sides. It has been awhile since we have gotten any kid of threats or fears from other countries since 9/11. Now they are starting up again ever since North Korea has gotten a new president, things have been a little tense. Obama hasn’t admitted that since sequester stepped in, and we have looked weaker and less of a threat, so more threats are coming our way. Obama needs to get over his fear of guns and violence so America can at least look better than it really is; which is pretty bad.
Americans having been dealing with a bad economy for a few years now, but our national budget has been the last straw. We can’t do anything about our current situation at the moment, but we just have to wait and see what happens, unless we impeach Obama for careless spending. Either way we will just have to wait and see what happens over the next few years. Back when Clinton was president and if he had done what Obama is doing now then we would basically have no debt. The military cuts could have gone a lot smoother if Obama did the sequester cut in the middle of his first term.