1. S AM B ERUBE, L IZ M ONTESANO, C HLOE D IPETRILLO

2. The National deficit started out during the Great Depression. The deficit wasn’t very high at the time, but when Ronald Reagan was elected as president in 1981, the deficit began to grow at an alarming pace. Our government’s money was being spent at an extremely dangerous rate. War has been a major factor in government spending. Today, needless spending has pushed the deficit to over $14 trillion.

3.  The United States is spending at a much faster rate than they can obtain funds through taxes and other means. This has caused massive debt that has limited government funding in many programs.  This lack of money limits how much we can spend to support the economy and the military. This lack of funds can lead to our industries collapsing.

4.  The government will not be able to bail out any companies due to lack of money. If these companies fail it could cause the economy to plummet rapidly causing many problems similar to the recession in 2008.  Last year the United States imported $253 billion worth of oil while only exporting $49 billion.  With 2,527,149 full time government employees, pay may be reduced resulting in less money circulation in the economy.

5. The deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government has and how much they can actually spend. The United States is currently in 14 trillion dollars of debt. The debt is so large because of the money it takes to support wars, which cost the government greatly. The deficit is still growing today. It has grown $4.14 billion per day since September 28 th 2007.

6.  It is really important to stay on budget because if the government is spending more money than it has, it can be detrimental to the economy.  There are many possible outcomes of spending too much money: PRIORITIZE A possible outcome is that the government will start choosing which programs are more important than others. They will start spending more money on the things they decide are most important. PRINT MORE MONEY The government might choose to print more money for themselves so they can pay off some of their debt. This would cause a lot of inflation in our currency which is not a good thing. RAISE TAXES A very likely solution to getting more money for the government is raising taxes. Unfortunately this would not be very good to US citizens who will not willingly pay extremely high taxes.

7.  Democrats believe that budget cuts are necessary for certain programs that are less important to the progress and industry of the country.  They also feel that tax breaks for top earning Americans should be eliminated.  Democrats believe in smarter spending of government funds.

8.  They believe that we should prioritize government spending. They hope that this will stop them from going way over budget.  In Massachusetts, Scott Brown (Republican) says that he will not raise taxes. Martha Coakley (Democrat) supports a $2 trillion spending spree.

9. Title john-k-davies.com Background on Defecit http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ http://zfacts.com/p/461.html http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/76375/ http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=488 freethoughtpedia.com Why SO Important? http://www.federalbudget.com http://www.census.gov Impact on Economy http://justfacts.com http://huffingtonpost.com economiccrisis.us Costs http://zfacts.com/p/461.html http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ http://census.gov http://technorati.com/politics/article/ Future http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_ 43/b4152000801269.htm http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp http://www.ontheissues.org/Background_Budget_+_Ec onomy.htm wordincarnate.wordpress.com Democrats http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487046571 04576142122744337858.html http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/04/senate- republicans-block-tax-cut-plan-that-leaves-out- high-earner/ media-pusher.blogspot.com Republicans http://jec.senate.gov/republicans/public/index.cfm?p= Budgetissue http://www.ontheissues.org/Budget_+_Economy.htm# Republican_Party http://www.ontheissues.org/Background_Budget_+_Ec onomy.htm media-pusher.blogspot.com