The guy I voted for didn’t win the Presidency. That’s ok. I survived the previous 4 years, and I’ll survive the next 4 as well. I may not approve of (or like) much of what President Obama proposes for the country in the coming years, but he is still the President, and like it or not will remain so until 2016.
As President, we have to hope that as a collective whole, Obama has our best interests at heart. That may actually be so, but in my opinion only if they line up with his proposed agenda. In January, the LA Times featured an article saying:
The president has been blunt in arguing that the nation’s fiscal problems can’t be solved unless military spending is reduced. To that end, he has imposed a cut of $487 billion in the core defense budget over the next 10 years, and threatened to cut more if needed.
That’s the thing that worries me, a little. I imagine R & D will be one of the deeper cuts to be made, and that’s where I work. Certainly, I would want peace for the world. I think any good person does.
I also want my country to remain strong; the strongest country in the world. Hopefully neither beholden nor indebted to any foreign countries. With that in mind, I fear that we as a country have made the wrong choice in this election.
Those two young men are my priority. Taking care of them is what I care about. The President may not deliberately be trying to undermine that, but it may yet happen. In trying to locate funding for his many promises, cuts do have to be made.
I wonder if the President has considered that the sweeping cuts he proposes will come at a cost? Cutting the defense budget by his proposed amount will mean many, many losses in jobs in defense manufacturing, defense engineering, soldiering, and in my case, defense testing.
It’s unavoidable. It’s a great and unfortunate irony that in finding money to create jobs and balance the budget the President will end many jobs and cause more people to resort to unemployment. It’s a tough and unenviable position.
But so is coming to work every day and hoping you get to keep doing it. Everyone who works out here is constantly wondering and speculating when it will be their heads on the chopping block. Morale is low and I wonder if the President thinks of that?
I guess it’s good I’m finishing my degree. I will probably need to update my resume in the not-so-distant future.
I will have to depend on God more and my country and President less, I suppose. That’s probably a good thing.
A Work in Progress 