Obama says he doesn't want to hear about spending cuts

By Justin Sink - 10/25/13

President Obama told Republicans in Congress that he doesn't want to hear about additional cuts to government programs after the 16-day shutdown.  The president said the country can afford to make investments in areas like education, and he noted that the shutdown cut into the economy.   “Don't tell me we can afford to shut down the government, which costs our government billions of dollars, but we can't afford to invest in our kids,” Obama said at a school in Brooklyn.

“This obsession with cutting for the sake of cutting hasn't helped our economy grow, it's held us back,” Obama said.

Standard & Poor's has estimated that the shutdown took about $24 billion from U.S. economy. Obama blasted “a small group” of House Republicans for causing what he said was a “manufactured crisis.” Congress now faces a Jan. 15 deadline for funding the government, and a Feb. 7 deadline for raising the debt ceiling.....To Read More....

My Take – All this rhetoric is nothing more than insane logical fallacies.  No one is cutting for the sake of cutting and this nation has spent - or wasted depending on your view - untold billions we don’t have on education that hasn’t produced educated students.  Make no mistake about this.  Today’s students -  junior high school, high school, college or graduate students - would be totally unable to pass this 1912 eighth grade test. Try it and see if I’m not right!  How much of our GDP were we devoting to education then?  It was substantially lower than it is now. 

 And with all this massive expenditure of tax dollars are we better than the rest of the world?  Among the other findings:

-Japan, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Flanders-Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and Korea all scored significantly higher than the United States in all three areas on the test.

-The average scores in literacy range from 250 in Italy to 296 in Japan. The US average score was 270. (500 was the highest score in all three areas.) Average scores in 12 countries were higher than the average US score.

-The average scores in math range from 246 in Spain to 288 in Japan. The US average score was 253, below 18 other countries.

-The average scores on problem solving in technology-rich environments ranged from 275 in Poland to 294 in Japan. The US average score was 277, below 14 other countries

This isn’t about education, or cutting for cutting's sake; it’s about bankruptcy!  To demagogue this is insanity!