The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since 1980 and is recognized globally as an expert on both technical and business issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed. He's a columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera and Linux Journal and frequently appears in other publications both online and in print. Additionally, Dave maintains four weblogs: The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, Ask Dave Taylor, Dave On Film, and GoFahterhood. Based in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs, as well as active member of his community and busy single father to three children.

Is it just me, or is there a reality distortion field in Washington DC?

I'm reading the Wall Street Journal this morning and come across this lead story: "BUSH SENT CONGRESS a $2.4 trillion election-year budget featuring big increases for defense and homeland security, as he faces a record $521 billion deficit." Now, maybe it's just me, but everyone I talk to is telling me what a hard time they're having with their finances, some of my best buddies have been laid off or had their companies close down, and in the writing community it's hard to find someone who isn't sharing tales of woe.

And the response to this is to have a government budget that works out to about $8,000 per person. My family, five of us, therefore have a government tab of $40,000. $6,660 of this goes directly to the Department of Defense, and another $666 goes to the Department of Homeland Security. However, it's not all tax-and-spend (or, in the spirit of modern Republican budget management, tax-refund-and-spend-anyway), because the Bush Administration is significantly cutting funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, the EPA is getting a larger budget cut than any other agency in the government. Surprised? I'm not.

The Whitehouse spin on this? According to the information on the Whitehouse Site, the purpose of this budget is to "help make America a more secure, more prosperous, and more hopeful country." I just don't see how we're going to be more prosperous and more hopeful with this kind of crippling debt, personally.

Posted by Dave Taylor at February 2, 2004 10:13 AM

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