I'm absolutely fucking sick of hearing people complain about the government when it seems like they don't know the basics of how our government works. I get that people dislike the President. I get that people dislike the cuts that are being made. But lets get one thing clear:
The President isn't the one that decides these cuts.
What's that? You didn't know that? You thought that the President had full power? No. Wrong. Don't you remember learning about a little system in place called "checks and balances"? It means that while the Executive branch (aka our President) is the one to sign a bill and pass it, the Legislative branch (aka Congress) is the one to actually write it up and create it while the Judicial system (aka the Supreme Court) make the ruling on a laws legality. It means that while the President can make speeches and statements about various things that he thinks should or should not happen, it ultimately comes down to what those 535 members decide on doing.
Get used to the fact that while the President is the one to sign a budget into law, Congress is required to pass a budget every year in October that decides where funds will be distributed and cut. Various committees in both the House of Representatives and Senate decide on what is put into the budget. And if they can get a budget put together and agreed upon by the majority (which hasn't happened since 2009), it gets sent to the President to be signed into a law. But you say he can veto a law which means this is all his fault? No. It can get sent back down for a 2/3 vote. And if that doesn't pass? Then the House and Senate can make appropriation bills and set up a time when automatic cuts will be made if they can't agree on a budget.
If you want to get mad at someone, get mad at the people that are sitting in Congress, writing laws and setting the budget and deciding what should be cut. Maybe you should get mad at the fact that there are certain aspects of the budget that can't be touched, while roughly 36% of the budget is open for our wonderful leaders to manipulate. Things like Social Security (22%), Medicare/Medicaid (23%) and the interest on the US debt (6%) are areas that generally can't be cut, they're mandatory spending. The "discretionary spending" that can be cut (17%) covers things like education, NASA, and departments that regulate food and health safety while the defense budget (19%) covers the military and wars and homeland security, this is where cuts are going to be made.
Maybe you should get made that the reason Social Security is such a financial drain on the country is brought about by leaders in Congress deciding some 30-odd years ago to use this money as their own personal bank while never paying it back. But guess what? Those people that paid into it are now retiring. And those people deserve to get their Social Security checks because its their money. Its not an entitlement, it is their money in the first place! Maybe you should stop getting mad at the 70-year old couple that draws a check every month that doesn't even cover half of their monthly living expenses. Maybe you should realize that there are simply more older people retiring than there are younger people working. So of course its going to cost more to give them Social Security. Maybe you should realize that people are living longer, Social Security was made to help people from retirement to when they die, which used to be around age 70 and is now around age 80.
Maybe instead of blindly blaming the President for the cuts being made to our education system you should get mad at the fact that the US defense budget is more than the top 12 countries combined and then the decision is made to cut their education assistance programs instead of cutting outdated programs and systems in place. Maybe you should get mad at the fact that the military has no problems spending money to update their computers and systems every year because if that money isn't spent, it means they have too large of a budget (which they do) and their budgets get cut the next year. Maybe you should start to realize that the three wars we were in cost a lot of money and we're going to be paying for them for quite a while. And those wars? Guess what? The current President wasn't the one to get us into them.
Maybe you should stop blaming a single individual for the Sequester and start blaming the people that actually thought it would be a good idea for automatic spending cuts to happen March 1, 2013. The people that thought this would be a good idea? Oh yeah, they're the same people that couldn't agree on a budget for a year and thought that in two years when things were really bad, they'd be able to come together and reach an agreement. Maybe you should take the time to actually learn about what the hell our government is doing instead of waiting until shit hits the fan and complaining about everything. Maybe you should take your opinions to the place where it actually matters, start participating in your elections that happen all the time instead of voting once every four years for a man that really doesn't have that much power.
Get mad at the government, that's fine. If you're mad, it means you're taking an interest. It means you're involved. But don't just sit back and get mad when things that we all knew would happen eventually happen. Before you start blaming a single individual for an entire country's problems, it might be in your best interest to actually learn how things work and how laws and budgets are made.
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