Public Education: Was it Stimulated?

Grunwald, Michael. “How to Spend a Trillion Dollars” Time Magazine. Time Inc, 15 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 June. 2010.

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In this article Michael Grunwald depicted the spending that President Obama intended to use the Stimulus package on. Grunwald tells how the stimulus package that was put forth by Obama was something never done before in American history. Grunwald says, “We’re in a death spiral: business are shedding workers at a record pace, which saps consumer spending, which leads to more layoffs, and so on.” Grunwald believes that while the stimulus package is a good idea, the federal government is putting the money from the stimulus package in the wrong places. Spending large amounts of money now with the stimulus package on helping to improve America so that the federal government saves money in the future, is the plan of President Obama stated by author Michael Grunwald. Grunwald goes on to say in the article, that when leaving specifics up to the congress and the states, they will be screwed up. Grunwald emphasizes that speed and size are not important, when dealing with the stimulus package. Grunwald expresses with all the good that can come out of the stimulus package, there is potential for bad, and there will no way to know if the stimulus package will work in the short term.

In New York, the state government does not have the funding it needs to help provide students with the needs to benefit their education, in this case transportation. The New York state government already provides money so that the students can get their passes for free, but are struggling, which is why the budget was proposed being cut. From the perspective of Grunwald, the federal government used money to help stimulate the economy but not in the right places, so is it the fault of the federal government that New York state does not have the money to continue to pay for the transit and bus passes for the students? Grunwald expressed that the money from the stimulus package was being used so that future spending would be less, but also said, by taking large amounts of money now; the children of the future will suffer in debt. Grunwald focused on how jobs are being loss at a fast pace, and this could be a problem with parents who would have to pay for transit and bus passes for their children. Grunwald’s view of the stimulus package relates to the question of, should New York government have to provide the monetary means for the transit and bus passes for students, by giving the reader a different option other than the state government to pay for the transit and bus passes.