I don't buy into this, 'Oh, poor us. We've got tough budget problems.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget.
A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
We have a bad habit of not being able to do things cheap.
By necessity, budgets require hard choices.
It's insane to try to balance the budget.
And as you point out, for American families who struggle every day to figure out how do they pay, we talk about gasoline prices. That throws budgets into a real problem when you have budgeted really tight.
We can't do everything with a budget, but we can put the country on much sounder financial footing.
What you really remember at the beginning was that you have to throw a budget together. We made some terrible mistakes at the beginning in my own budget that took us at least a year to catch up on.
And, we have no such thing as a budget anymore. Our manager freaks when we show him the bill. We're lavish to the bone, but all our money goes back into the product.
So I come before you with a budget that is honest in its discussion of our challenges, creative in its possible solutions, compassionate in its commitment to our most vulnerable, and balanced on the bottom line.