In the past few months, big budgeting changes have been made. What does this mean for the people?
The U.S. Department of Education has cut over $600 million from teacher grants and reportedly shrunk their workforce in half. With the dismantling of the Department under consideration, students/teachers are not getting what they need. For high poverty/low income schools this change is detrimental. Not just lower class families will be affected. Middle class families will also be affected by the skyrocketing tuition fees. Without funding, teachers are forced to pay more out of pocket and students aren’t getting the education they need. Parents are also paying more for school supplies to make up for the lack of funding. Children/students are our future generation and a good economy starts with education. If our future generation isn’t properly educated what will happen when they become adults?
Why was this change made? The simple answer is costs. Although there are other factors such as the program being wasteful and moving to a more local approach the main reason still remains with money.
According to many this change was made due to wasteful spending and to save money they cut funding and workforce. Similar slashes have been made to other departments and agencies such as the Health and Human Services Department, EPA, and State Department. Surprisingly not all spending has been reduced. Trump has announced his plan of a significant increase in military spending. The proposed plan is a $1 trillion defense budget. The United States already spends more than the next highest 9 countries combined so why is the budget increasing again? It’s not exactly clear what this increase will be used for when Trump talks about being the “Ultimate Peace President”. Although the military is important, why is it necessary for us to spend so much if all the other countries spend so much less? Well rumors are that a large portion of this spending will go towards a military parade on Trump’s birthday. The rest could go toward the proposed takeover of Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada.
The whole situation is quite odd and many details are unknown. As schools struggle with the budget shortage there’s an increase for defense spending? A so-called “Peace President” is talking about taking over multiple different countries? Either way it’s important to pay attention to these new changes and I hope that both the pros and cons of each decision is thought thoroughly before it is made.
Related Stories:
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/nx-s1-5330917/trump-schools-education-department-cuts-low-income
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-defense-budget-trillion-hegseth-rcna200420
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/07/hegseth-trump-1-trillion-defense-budget-00007147
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/department-of-education-job-cuts/
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