President Obama States He Will Not Approve Education Cuts -- And Rightly So

At an Arlington, Virginia, middle school, President Barack Obama continued his insistence that No Child Left Behind got some ideas right and some ideas wrong. He used comments on the 2001 program to segue into the idea that the nation's educational budget must not be cut. The President maintains that reforms are needed in the nation's schools and money is required to bring these reforms about. In his speech, as reported on Politco.com, President Obama made a particularly valid point:

"We cannot cut education. We can't cut the things that will make America more competitive."

So many old adages apply here, with "Don't bite your nose off to spite your face" being the most prominent. The world is changing. America is no longer a bountiful land full of good-paying blue collar jobs for people who want to work and raise a family without higher education. The importance of a college degree rises each year, and the American educational system has to be prepared to send more children to college. To do that, accountability must be raised on a national level. Children in school now are the political leaders of tomorrow. If we, the American people, do not see to it that these children are educated and educated well, we will end up paying the price for it for the rest of our lives.

The American public is continually told about "tough choices" when it comes to reducing spending, but those choices must be weighed against other tough choices. Touch choices like defense spending.

The Economist recently ran an article about Robert Gates proactively cutting into the "sacred cow" of defense spending, but ultimately the changes amounted to an increase in spending from $549 billion to $553 billion. The U.S. defense budget currently operates at a level greater than the next 20 highest defense budgets combined. America spends 50 percent more, adjusted for inflation, on defense than it did at the height of the Cold War. Neither Democrats nor Republicans want to step up to the plate and strike a blow that would alleviate a great deal of our nation's financial strain.

The greatest argument for America's bloated defense budget is to protect our homes and families from the unseen enemy and terrorists. The irony of this argument is that the people who speak these words from one side of their mouth would forsake the education and future of America's schoolchildren and future families out of the other.

This national battle over education stretches from Washington D.C. to California, where Jerry Brown's budget proposal, first covered by CNN Money in January, is facing a negotiation breakdown with key Republicans while California students protest education cuts (Fox 40) being suggested alongside simultaneous large increases in student tuition costs at state universities.

Education must be protected from one side of the country to the other and continually improved. State governments and Congress must realize this and must remember that they are elected do what is best for the American people, and not their fellow politicians.

America's children deserve to be equal, and education is the great equalizer.