House fails to extend unemployment benefits

Yesterday, on November 17th, the house failed to pass a bill that would have extended the jobless benefits for another three months. The last extension which lasted six months costed the government $34 billion, adding more to our deficit and also causing huge debate.

Both House and Senate Democrats have said they would have liked to extend the deadline by a year, but the House settled on three months in hopes that it would pass more easily.

I can understand that their are a lot of different opinions that causes debates. For the fact that millions of families are dealing with the hardships of not having a job, but also the fact that its digging a deeper hole for a our deficit which we are trying to dig ourselves out of. Its a hard call to decide wether we should help our nation in the long run or help our citizens in need now.

 

A Second Group of Experts Calls for Cutting Military Programs to Lower U.S. Debt

A bipartisan group of budget experts are putting the pressure on the Pentagon to reduce the spendings and reduce weapon programs. If this proposed five year plan to freeze Pentagon spendings, it would save $5.9 trillion dollars by 2020.

“Would this be easy? No,” said Gordon Adams, a professor at American University who led a team that prepared the group’s recommendations on military spending.

But given that the Pentagon accounts for more than half of the government’s discretionary spending, “We think it’s a reasonable plan,” he said.

Although its an on going debate about who's the problem, I believe that even though this will cut down the defense budget its a step in the right direction. If we continue on this path we can slowly work our way out of this deficit.