Yesterday my wife pointed out to me an article in BYU’s Daily Universe. It was talking about how the United States House of Representatives just passed a bill which would reduce the amount of money that students would receive from the federal government to pay for school. It still has to pass the senate, but it is a direction in which many states are heading. Several states are finding their state budget is not getting balanced and so they have decided to cut their budgets in some areas, one of those being higher education. My thoughts on the matter... I am all for it! But wait, you are saying, you are student, doesn’t that hurt you? It does in some ways but not in others. Let’s walk through these ideas and see how we got here.
The problem that we are finding ourselves in is a growing national debt. This is not new, but it is growing quickly without very many people planning on paying it back anytime soon. How did we get here? Well, you can point at several events but what you are actually seeing is an attitude that has come over the nation and the leaders of it. Rather than following principals, like we want a balanced budget, or low taxes, people are seeking out policies. Why? Well, so many people want their bills and laws to be passed, and so it becomes a you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. If people stood up and said I want a balanced budget and I will not agree to any bill that will exceed our budget, things would be a lot different in this nation. I am not talking about crisis or wars. I am talking about day to day policies like pell grants, or bridge and road building, or even things like school funding. I know it sounds crazy but the government can pay for everything. So we must define our policies by our principals.
Sadly, most of the people in this nation have developed horrible principals. They have developed an entitlement principal, that we are Americans and deserve everything that we want. It doesn’t work. Money and funding doesn’t come out of thin air. We have to change this idea in the nation that we deserve everything and that life should be fair. Life is not fair and you don’t deserve everything. Hopefully we can get things worked out in America and get some leaders that are principal centered. Let’s face it, one day all this debt is going to come due, and then what?
