Congressional Move to Balance the Budget on Education and Social Welfare :: Politics Political Essays

Congressional Move to Balance the Budget on Education and Social Welfare The current Congressional move toward a balanced budget is the one theme in Congress debate. The parameters of debate have in fact become very narrow. The Republicans want to balance the budget in seven years. President Clinton is holding out to ten. Either way, Congress is likely this year to make some deep reduction in government outlays. These cuts in funding are going to affect all the areas of the economy, specially education and social welfare. Simply getting into college is a challenge for everyone. The difficulties do not end once you have received that much hoped for college acceptance letters. The truth is that many students with skills, qualifications and a desire for a college education are stopped short in their quest for knowledge and better employment opportunities by the high costs of tuition and student living expenses. Unless a tuition-needy student wins the lottery, his or her most realistic options for getting a college education are interest-consuming college loans or scholarships. In response to this financial need, many corporations, government agencies and civil groups have instituted scholarship programs that give students more of a fighting chance in the high competitive race for financial aid. This aid is going to be affected by the education funding cuts; specially the aid offered by government agencies. These cuts would decrease the number of professionals that are going to graduate in the future, which at the same time would affect the technological and scientific growth of the country, fields in which the United States holds one of the first places in the world. Also this reduction in education funds would reduce the options for young people making them even more confused about what life has to offer them and what should they do in the future. In some cases this situation can confuse the student so much, putting them in a situation similar to the one that Hamlet was in the Shakespearian play when he expressed his famous soliloquy: "TO BE OR NOT TO BE." ; where the two options in this case would be: one to stay fighting for their dreams or to take an easy way out that sometimes can take them to their own destruction.