Guided Response: Review several of your peer's posts. In each response post of at least 100 words, respond to at least two of your peers' posts in a substantive manner. Provide information that they may have missed or may not have considered about the 2018 President's Budget. Do you agree with your peers' findings? Why or why not?

Student One Post:

According to the data we pulled, since 1950 the governments budget has shown a surplus 9 times and a deficit 65 times (7 of these are estimates). The largest surplus was recorded in the year 2000 at 2.3% to GDP, and the three largest deficits occurred concurrently from 2009 to 2011 (-9.8%, -8.7%, -8.5% to GDP respectively).

By far the highest deficits incurred in millions of dollars were also from 2009 to 2012. During these years, the government settled the deficit by leaning into outlays (borrowed funds). The government primarily relies on revenues generated from taxes to cover expenses, but also leverages borrowing opportunities to offset any deficit. These deficits are usually created from spending money on various government programs (including social services), buildout and replacement of infrastructure, defense spending etc.

For the fiscal year of 2018, the government cut many programs to reduce overall spending by $26,693,000,000. Some of the major cuts were in education ($4,976,000,000), health and human services ($4,834,000,000), housing and urban development ($4,123,000,000), and state and USAID ($4,256,000,000). These cuts were necessary as the economy had downward momentum and was in a recession. Generally, when the economy is slowing down, the government needs to become as lean as possible because it can expect tax revenues to decrease, which means it would need to borrow additional funds to cover deficits. This can have lasting political and economic implications including impacting inflation.

Student Two Post:

In reviewing the data in tables 1.1 and 1.2, it is safe to say that our government does spend more than it earns. In 68 years, 1950 to 2018, I believed that we had a deficit in 59 of those years and nine surpluses. In addition, the three years with the highest obligations were 2009 with -9.8%, 2010 had a -8.7% deficit, in 2011 was -8.5%, and lastly, in 2000, we had the highest surplus at 2.3%.

According to the data I read, the years 2009,2010, and 2011 were funded with borrowed funds (if I am mistaken, please help me out). "Mandatory and discretionary spending account for more than ninety percent of all federal spending, and pay for all the government services and programs on which we rely" (National Priorities Project 2015). Interest on debt is the money the government pays towards accumulated debts.

Planning is a significant piece for any organization and helps to plan accordingly. I feel that there are many areas where our legislature could reduce the spending just because of the gigantic measure of obligation that we are currently in. Simply put, as a county, we should not borrow more than we can pay back and budget properly to avoid getting further and further into debt.