February 27, 2009
Post n.1 (of my own choice)

On Thursday February 26 President Obama proposed a 10-year budget in a document entitled “A New Era of Responsibilities”. I am going to analyze the way the different parts of the budget are prioritized, first of all by foreign on-line news such as BBC and TV5, and then by American on-line news such as CNN and Fox News. The President himself in his speech on February 24 mentioned his priorities in the order recalled by the document itself: green energy, health care, education, military expenditures. The priorities are also, even though only partly, reflected in the money the President put into each sector.






The French channel TV5 started by announcing that the military budget of the USA is going to increase only by 1.5 %. Nothing to do with the 4 or 5%of the Bush administration. Then they said that President Obama is going to announce the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Then they went on discussing the details of the budget starting by stressing the huge expenditure of $3.6 trillion which caused many critics by the Republicans. Then they mentioned that the president is going to cut the expenditures during his mandate. The various parts were dealt, thus, in the following order: military expenditure, health care and green energy. The analysis I found on the BBC started by mentioning the cutting of tax for business, then the elimination of money for weapons which are enormously expensive but kept high because they are in the interest of certain groups, then the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

On CNN I could find many videos on the speech given by President Obama on Tuesday and many video commenting on his budget. Among them there was one called ‘Obama’s budget’ where David Gergen mentioned first health care and clean energy. The discussion focused on the huge amount of expenditure of the budget. The following video was called ‘Fighter jet or fight for jobs’ which discusses the fact that many Congressmen are in favor of keeping the military expenditure high in order to keep and create new jobs. The reporter argues that jobs would not be lost since people would simply be moved to other projects. They mention a study by the University of Massachusetts that showed how info-structures, mass transit and education all generate more jobs than military spending.

On Fox News I found a video which reported the comments on the budget made by Mitt Romney in an episode of Hannity. Because Fox News is channel that supports the ideas of the Republicans, he strongly criticized the amount of expenditure proposed by President Obama, that he defined as ‘unstoppable, uncontrollable, unbridled and unfounded’. He mentioned health care first, than bail out for banks, then tax hikes and education among the President’s priorities. He did not mention military spending.

To conclude, I found very interesting to check various sources of news, and I believe that this is a good way to get more information. However, the information I got answered many questions, but above all, raised many questions in my mind, which may seem naïve and superficial, but that I had never thought about before. In particular, I asked myself the following question, with which I conclude: are the weapons the USA sell abroad (and they are the main part of the ones that can be found on the global market) designed and produced with the same tax payers money that are used for the ‘defense’ expenditure?