For most of this year, I have been blogging about my life as a senior and all the hurdles and experiences that come with it, and I have found that it is getting harder and harder to come up with topics to talk about every few weeks or so. Besides, my life really isn’t that interesting or exciting so I have put some thought into it, and I have decided to write about something I am more passionate about and something that I think you guys want and NEED to read. So, from this point onward, I am going to be writing about national and international events currently ongoing in the world, but it would not be very innovative to merely discuss current issues when you could just easily type in cnn.com in your tool bar, so I am going to focus on how current issues affect you and me and how they affect St. Charles, as in-plausible as that sounds.

In the latest issue of the Central Focus, I wrote an editorial regarding the message of President Obama’s speech at the memorial for the shooting victims in Tucson and how our generation needs to start taking an active role in shaping our future.

So I thought it would be appropriate to discuss President Obama’s recently released budget proposal for 2012. Now if any average person is serious about reading the entire budget proposal (it makes the Bible looks like a children’s book), then all the power to you. But there are aspects of the proposal that you should be aware of and concerned about.

But first, here are some of the basics:

-President Obama’s budget proposes $3.7 Trillion in spending for the 2012 fiscal year.

-The budget plans to cut the federal deficit by $1.1 Trillion over a 10 year period.

But now to get down to where it affects you and me: education. The president’s budget cuts funding for elementary and secondary education by 10.4%. This means less federal dollars to states which in turns means less state funding to school districts. 10.4% may seem like a lot, but according to policyalmanac.org, 92.7% of funding comes from non-federal sources, so I give that cut a thumbs up.

The portion of the education budget that really caught my attention was 56.5% increase in Federal Student Aid for college students. This means more money for myself and other seniors next school year. I do not have a problem with spending that is repayable in the future; more education does equal more money in today’s world.

If you would like to view a break down of spending for the next year in a down-to-earth fashion, I’d advise you to check out this link http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/.

If you have any questions about this week’s blog, any questions in general, feel free to send me an email at [email protected], or contact me via Twitter or Facebook and I will answer your questions in next week’s blog.