life in america

Like many Americans, I am thrilled and excited about the election of Barack Obama. I am a little miffed that I will be in the middle of a meeting at work during the inaguration, but I have a DVR and will watch and weep over his speech during my lunch hour.
We keep hearing we are in in the middle of very difficult times, and we are. I learned yesterday that state budget cuts may have a very negative impact on programs at work, and have already begun to impact people through out the state. I am, of course, not wanting to lose my job any more than anyone else, but I am more concerned over the impact these budget cuts will have on the most vulnerable in our state. We are looking at cuts in Medicaid programs, people who are struggling with addiction may not have much help available at to them at all, and psychiatric facilities are having to cut beds and move people out. Locally, many people just hired to work at the state penitentiary have been fired, due to deep cuts in the DOC budget. The local DMV office will be closing this summer. Its sucks for a lot of people right now....
While I understand the need to not go into dramatic amounts of debt; dear hubby and I have been talking about how maybe we just need to realize that we need to go into some debt as a state to keep vital programs going. Maybe we need to be willing to suck it in some more in other ways. Reduction and, in some cases, removal of our social safety net should not be the main way we try to balance our budget.
I wish I had an easy solution. I don't. And I don't envy the people who are having to make these difficult decisions. Lets hope we can weather the storm and begin to recover soon.