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Should the next President raise taxes or cut programs to help pay off the national debt?

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Raise 'em		26%	15 votes	Total: 57 votes
Cut 'em		74%	42 votes	Total: 57 votes

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Cut 'em

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The next President will have to do both: raise taxes and cut spending to reduce the national debt. There are many reasons why we have a national debt: corporate welfare, wasteful and unnecessary spending by the congress and president. This has occurred no matter who is in power or which party controls the majority in congress.

Giving tax breaks to companies that move their facilities overseas and offshore contribute to the national debt. Tax cuts to rich people and corporations contribute to increasing the national debt.

A prime example of federal governmental waste is the fiscal 2009 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act. This fiscal monstrosity contains a total of 17 projects for a total of $133 million. The Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security's members received nearly $123 million or 92 percent of those funds.

Here are a few examples of waste from this Act. All information is courtesy of www.cagw.org. $39.7 million went to the Advanced Training Center, which is supposed to train border agents. It was requested by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).

''$27 million by Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee member Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) for the Southeast Region Research Initiative in Tennessee. The website for this program has no white papers or reports of their research available, only project descriptions.'' (http://www.cagw.org/site/News 2?page=NewsArticle&id=11562&pr inter_friendly=1).

Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi also added $22.3 million for the construction of the National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage in his home state.

Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington included $4.5 million for the construction of the 2010 Olympics Coordination Center to be built in Bellingham, Washington. Although the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Senator Murray believes that the United States should respond to any type of security threat that could disrupt the Games.

Of course, all the military bases throughout the world that the United States deploys troopps are prime examples of government waste as well. Our involvement in Iraq has wasted money too. The next president and congress has to have a completely different mindset if they want to reduce the national debt.

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Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

Should the next President raise taxes or cut programs to help pay off the national debt?

Cut 'em

1 of 3
by Bruce W. Coffman

Unfortunately, the next President will find himself in the position of being forced to both raise taxes and cut programs
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2 of 3
by David Giza

The next President will have to do both: raise taxes and cut spending to reduce the national debt. There are many reasons
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Raise 'em

1 of 2
by Brandon Romines

Obviously, something must be done to allay our national debt. Due to wasteful spending by the government, and an expensive
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2 of 2
by Lam Luu

Almost 9.7 trillions and counting, that's the size of the US' public debt. Almost 10 trillions. It is joked that a whole
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