President Obama hosted a Twitter town hall event at the White House on Wednesday. He received an avalanche of questions at the town hall forum through Twitter, which is a popular social media service which was launched on July 15, 2006 by Jack Dorsey. Of the many thousand questions that streamed in, he answered 18 in a familiar, spoken explanatory style that exceeded the designated length of the tweet. Obama's first answered concerning mistakes he made in handling the recession was short by his standards--2300 but 2160 characters longer than a tweet is supposed to be. Another question was from House Speaker John Boehner and the question was "After embarking on a record spending binge that left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?" "This is a slightly skewed question," Obama said of his political rival. Obama said the economy is creating jobs, but not at a fast enough pace. President Obama started out by sending his first live tweet through a laptop sitting on a lectern.
President Obama took many questions over immigration, cost of college costs, collective bargaining, the debt limit, manufacturing jobs, the housing crisis and many other topics. One of the questions that Obama tweeted at the town hall meeting was "In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep?" I can answer the first part of the question. Any type of spending that is unconstitutional should be eliminated. Any type of spending that doesn't serve the common good should be on the chopping block. What really is disturbing is the lack of sense of urgency among the Republican leadership in the House to eliminate unconstitutional spending. For example, the Affordable Health Care Act which was passed in March 2010 should be defunded in the House. So far the House hasn't defunded Obamacare. The Republicans in the House have the power to control spending. They haven't shown any leadership nor serious interest in doing so. The previous budget deal that was passed a few months ago only reduced the deficit to $352 million, if even that much. At first the Republicans proposed $100 billion in spending cuts then it was whittled away to $352 million. That's bogus! There are all kinds of pork barreling projects that Congressional leaders insert into bills for their particular district that should be eliminated. All earmarks should be eliminated. Some of the departments in the executive branch should be eliminated such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy to name a few. What is the purpose in keeping these cabinet positions if they are inept and are not fulfilling their purpose? If schools are continually being dumbed down and student achievement is declining, what is the purpose for keeping the Department of Education? If the Department of Education isn't yielding positive results, it should be eliminated. The same with Commerce, Homeland Security, and Energy. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 by Jimmy Carter due to the "energy crisis" of the 1970's. The purpose of the cabinet was to explore different alternatives of fuel so America won't be as reliant on oil. We're no closer to being energy independent today in America than we were in 1977. That's because the forces of Nimrod want America to rely on the Middle East for oil. And we still keep these dysfunctional cabinet positions. I guarantee you in the private sector if a corporation had positions in the company that weren't useful in making the corporation successful, those positions would be eliminated because they're costly to the corporation. All the bureaucracy in our government is costly to the taxpayers. The taxpayers aren't reaping the benefits with all the massive bureaucracy that's in our government. The vast majority of bureaucracy in the federal government needs to be eliminated.
Recently we've heard much debate among our politicians that there needs to be reform in the entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. There's no question about that. Social Security is a great program for Seniors but I believe that Social Security needs to be privatized and removed from the auspices of the federal government. The American taxpayer pays far more into Social Security than what he/she will draw when they retire. That's because the politicians steal the money to spend on other bills. I know that sounds controversial among Senior Citizens. Those Seniors that are retired and drawing Social Security and those in the work force who are near retirement should receive the full benefits of Social Security since they paid into it all their working years. Those that are 45 and younger need to start investing their money into a private account. We can't trust the government to be good stewards of the money that's sent to Washington for Social Security. Younger people need to invest their money into another account for retirement. Social Security is going broke and it eventually won't be there for Seniors to draw upon in approximately 20 more years. With Medicare there needs to be tort reform passed which would limit the liability amount on medical malpractice lawsuits. Also, fraud and waste in the health care industry needs to be reined in as well. If great scrutiny was applied to how the health care profession is funded, then the costs of Medicare and Medicaid would probably decrease. I don't have the answers when it comes to reforming Medicare and Medicaid, but there needs to be financial reform in those areas.
There are all kinds of unconstitutional spending that needs to be eliminated. I could devote several pages speaking of the many cuts that need to be made. I am tired of hearing Democrats' solution for the deficit is to raise taxes on the wealthy and to raise the debt ceiling, which Congress must decide by August 2. The problem with funding our government isn't lack of revenue--it's ridiculous overspending on the part of both political parties for several decades. It's been coming to a head within the last 10 years under the George W. Bush/Barack Obama administrations. Revenue to the federal government has declined in the last few years due to the job losses in the private sector. If the private sector recovers and more jobs are added to the payroll, then there'll be more revenue going to the federal government. Given the fact the national debt is over 14 trillion dollars, we need draconian budget cuts coupled with new revenue going to the government as the result of new jobs being created in the private sector. Those two things could help rein in the national debt. Consequently time isn't on our side. This should've been done yesterday. We shouldn't be waiting until August 2nd to rein in the national debt.
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