RightChange: Debt Crisis: Where Does Our Money Go?

For the past several months, the American people have become ultra saturated with the words - budget, debt, and deficit.   You hear these words being thrown around by politicians, political analysts, late night television hosts, and maybe even your neighbor’s parrot.  What you aren't saturated with are details on where taxpayer money ends up.  Americans and Vice President Joe Biden seem to be tired of all the political rhetoric and just want to see a plan put forward that makes cents.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) spoke to CNN’s Candy Crowley about the country’s current financial crisis.  Ms. Crowley asked the Senator what he thought the right change should be as it related to the three words listed above. Near the end of their conversation he implied that cutting spending needs more transparency:

"When I want to turn in money for my office, I want to turn a couple hundred thousand dollars back in that I’m not going to spend? It is unclear where that money goes. We cannot even be confident that the couple hundred thousand I want to give back goes towards the debt. Our government is out of control. They don’t need more money, we need to give them less money."

Senator Paul makes a great point- where does that money go?  The government expects every business to have clean accounting books or else face fines, sanctions, and even jail time, yet the D.O.D. has repeatedly said that it’s too big to be audited.  The playing field is not even and the concerns Senator Paul expressed are reflective of what most Americans want to know – “Where does all our money go?”

In life you have expectations and then you have the experience.  The expectation that President Obama so eloquently communicated during his presidential campaign in 2008 was “Hope and Change”.  He thought the United States had taken a turn for the worst and believed he could help get our country back on track.  So far, the experience has been far less glamorous and has made Americans far less hopeful.  The expectation he set in his message of “Hope and Change” inspired people to vote him into the White House, the experience of a more convoluted tax code, a massive increase in our nation’s deficit, and the passing of Obamacare will have him filing for a change of address in 2012.

Back To Blog