Ideas to better a person’s life is always a positive. There are individuals that need help to get a foothold in the world. The ideas aren’t the problem here: people are the problem. Ideas are awesome, but not when people start finding ways to take advantage of such ideas or that they don’t think through the ideas and they become very bad version of their intentions.

Programs like WIC and Food Stamps, and various other forms of welfare are great ideas, in principle. When I was a single mom, I worked as hard as I could at my minimum wage job for sometimes 80 hours a week and couldn’t make ends meet on my own. Programs like this were intended to help people like me, those who worked hard but needed help to support their family. Now, the program has become a shadow of what it was because there are people out there that take advantage of these programs because they don’t feel like working. There are people trying to get help on these programs that can’t, because there are people who are finding loopholes so that they can sit around and just collect free money. Which is sad, because there are people who actually need this help and can’t get it because there are dishonest people mooching from a great idea that had great intentions. See, the problem isn’t the programs but the loopholes and people taking advantage of them.

Which leads me to the new program the president wants to put into place: free community college. That’s a great idea. I went to community college so that I could get all my pre-req’s out of the way because I blew a ton of money on a private 4-year college that 6 years later I still owe $30,000 left on and that doesn’t include the year and a half that my mother paid for from her retirement plan. It’s an economical plan that many people today are using. There are professions that you can get that are decent pay from a 2 year degree. This could be a fantastic idea. Get some people, who are trying to make something of their lives and want a degree to give a better lives for their families, to school so they can get off of welfare and into the workforce. Except, I see a problem. Who is going to pay for this amazing plan? With such a high amount of national debt, the government should be focusing on fixing their budget and the debt rather than paying for education. Would it come from our taxes? So we have to pay more for a program that people might take advantage of, like with every other entitlement we have in America? How can we even guarantee that our tax money is even going to go to this program and not to add onto the pocket of our congressmen? Even more than that, will we have to pay more in state taxes as well because they want the states to foot a portion of the bill? This sounds like a great idea, that is not well thought out at all. The government has great ideas that are never thought out and end up being money drains on the American people because they can’t balance their budget like the American people have to do on a daily basis.

If you want us to stand by your ideas, we need to have a plan that we can believe in and follow. This plan on the surface sounds fantastic. When you think about it for a few days, it starts to seem like a disaster. What if it becomes a requirement for people to stay on welfare? So you’re forcing people to go to school that doesn’t want to, and it ends up being a waste of money because they don’t go to class or fail because they just want the money? (Not saying that all people on welfare are cheats, but let’s be real here: there are some.) Then the tax payers are wasting money on tuition for people who aren’t taking it seriously. Then there’s the point of: high school is free and people take it as a joke. I didn’t take it seriously, nearly flunking out of high school. Then I went to college, and I had to pay for it and I was sure the hell going to make sure that I got what I paid for. I left community college with a 3.9 GPA, and graduated my 4 year college with a 3.4 GPA. A far cry from my barely there grades in high school. Fact: people work harder when they pay for it or have something to work for. This could be another consideration when debating this topic.

I do agree college costs are out of hand. I fear for my children going to college because I don’t think we’ll be able to afford helping pay their way, unless I start selling novels or my husband runs his own IT company. Or both, at the rate the costs are going up. I keep forcing the idea of working hard and getting good grades in hopes that it sinks in and he gets scholarships. I encourage additional activities like sports and band to help the scholarship push, not to mention he needs to get whatever he can to get a leg up on the competition to even get into college. I’m not alone in this. I don’t have hope that the government can fix it, because everything they seem to touch goes to hell fast. I don’t think this is the way though, at least not at this time. Maybe when our national debt gets dropped and the government learns what a budget is. We can’t afford to put money into more new programs when we can’t even afford the ones we have now.