National debt exceeds $18T

     On Tuesday, December 02, 2014 FOX News published an article titled “National debt exceeds $18T, sparking renewed criticism of spending under Obama.” The United States’ National Debt has always been a major issue. Currently, the United States is in $18 trillion worth of debt. This has sparked “renewed criticism Tuesday from Republicans and other fiscal conservatives over the soaring trajectory of government spending under President Obama.” Since Obama has been our president, our debt has increased over 70 percent. “The national debt has skyrocketed by over $7.3 trillion,” Priebus said. “President Obama once said it was ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘irresponsible’ to add $4 trillion to the debt. By his own reasoning then, (he) has reached a new level of irresponsibility.” I agree with this statement because if Obama did state that it was irresponsible to add onto our already high debt, then how is it that he has let it increase since his presidency?

     Something should be done and immediately. “The federal debt, which topped $18 trillion, last week, is the sum of two numbers. The first is $12.92 trillion in public debt, which consists of all the outstanding Treasury bills, notes and bonds held by individuals, corporations, foreign governments and others. The second is the $5.08 trillion in so-called “intra-governmental” holdings, special securities held by U.S. government trust funds and special funds – or basically IOUs from the federal government for money that it ‘borrowed’ from Social Security and Medicare.” Studies have shown that if all the money in the world were to be combined, it would still be able to pay off the U.S. National debt.

     Going back to the article, the National Debt has always been an issue, but now that it has been significantly increasing is starting to become a major problem. While it may not seem to affect our generation today, it will substantially affect future generations.

U.S.-China climate deal offers new hope: Our view

     On Wednesday, November 12, 2014 USA Today published an article titled “U.S.-China climate deal offers new hope: Our view.” The article (written by The Editorial Board) is about how global warming is now becoming a “global problem that requires a global solution.” China and the United States together produce about 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, which therefor accounts them as the majority for the rise of global warming. Beijing made an announcement recently that the emissions were becoming an issue and needed to be dealt with immediately. Up until recently, China and the United States have been going back and forth on who was going to fix the problem first. “China has resisted limits because the U.S. and other nations had a decades-long head start on industrialization. The U.S has been reluctant to act only to see increases from China swamp any U.S. reductions.” Now both the United States and China are trying to fix the global warming issue, “President Obama set a new target to cut U.S. carbon pollution 26%-28% from 2005 levels by 2025. And Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged — for the first time — to cap his nation's carbon emissions by 2030 and sharply increase its share of non-fossil fuel energy.”

     Of course the climate change issue won’t get solved entirely; however it is a start in the right direction. According to the Editorial Board, “The agreement also will give a big boost to United Nations climate talks next month in Peru and next year in France. With China (24% of global greenhouse gases) and the U.S. (15%) on board, it will be easier to bring along other big emitters, such as the European Union (10%) and India (6%).”

What Obama Could Learn From Bush

     On Wednesday, October 29, 2014 CNN published an article titled “What Obama Could Learn from Bush”. The article (written by David Rothkopf) is about how “Both Bush and Obama have overseen unsettled era of post 9/11 foreign policy.”  Bush had his fair share of faults while still in presidency, such as “the unilateralist excess of the first term of the Bush administration; its signature error was the invasion of Iraq” as said by Rothkopf. Later on into Bush’s term, he realized that whatever mistakes he made needed to be solved and in his second term, Bush instituted a sweeping reordering of his administration, its policies and priorities.

     Now at the end of his second term, Obama is finding himself “a string of errors of judgment and execution.” His errors “have contributed to damaged relations or crises ranging from those in Syria and Iraq to Libya to Egypt and Israel, from Ukraine to Afghanistan to Africa. They include crises at our own borders and strained relations with our allies over NSA eavesdropping.” Obama cannot erase what has been done during his term, but he is going to try and prevent any other errors from occurring.

     Given the fact that Bush had his fair share of errors during his terms. Obama should look to him as a reference to fix his own errors, “Obama must create change from within his administration.” Not saying that Obama will follow in the steps of Bush exactly, however he [Obama] can use his [Bush] solutions as guidance to how to fix the problems that have occurred within the past two terms. 

Obama: GOP Immigration Stance is Political Suicide

On Friday, October 10, 2014, CNN published an article titled "Obama: GOP Immigration Stance is Political Suicide." The article (written by Eric Bradner) is about immigration and how the GOP risks "Losing a generation of immigrants" as said by Obama himself.

Obama wants to pass a law that allows more immigrants to come into the country. “Obama said he will make visa changes to allow more technically skilled workers to enter the United States, and noted that naturalized Americans have won 25% of the country's Nobel Prizes in the sciences” stated by Bradner. However, the Republicans are not fond of this idea because they feel there are too many people already in the country already (therefor adding more people will not help the situation). Obama wants to wait until the Midterm elections are over to pass this law (he thinks that after the election, he will get more people to approve of his decision). Republicans think otherwise.

This article is worth reading because it involves more people that may or may not be allowed into our country. This will affect the job market.