In life, you have to learn to prioritize.  Right now, the world is in an economic crisis.  Banks are in trouble, industries are in trouble, and experts are predicting the biggest rise in unemployment since WWII.  In this turmoil, President-elect Obama has announced his intent to pass a stimulus plan to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs that some estimate will require $500-700 billion.  In addition, Obama is said to be reconsidering his promise to repeal the Bush tax cuts, instead letting them expire as scheduled in 2011.  Which raises the question: How is he going to pay for all his spending?

The government simply does not have all these billions to throw around.  As noted in my other blog post, “Will Change save us enough change,” Obama had planned to pay for his health care reforms by repealing the Bush tax cuts, but experts feel that repealing the tax cuts would not be enough.  Now, Obama is floating the idea of not annulling the tax cuts at all while at the same time increasing government spending even more. And of course, as evidenced by the $700 billion bailout plan’s mixed results, this stimulus package might not work as well as its supporters intend.

So what will it be?  Tax cuts? Health reform?  Economic stimulus? Providing more aid to Afghanistan?  Our government didn’t have enough money to pay for all this before and it certainly doesn’t have enough money for all these new expenses.  It’s time for change but we don’t have the resources to change everything at once and we have to realize that.  Otherwise, the next few generations will have an impossibly large debt to pay off.  And that crisis would probably be much worse than the one we’re in now.