Money and Time.

[Ravy]

By all indications, when a new president takes office in 2009 all or a large part of our economy will be feeling the effects of a recession. The dollar has been greatly devalued, increasing costs on everything manufactured elsewhere (read almost everything). Gas prices will continue to be high.

There are a lot of needs. The infrastructure is crumbling. Our dependence on foreign oil pretty much dictates that we will need a national plan with dollars for research and perhaps subsidies to emerging technologies for them to take hold. Every single one of our trade agreements needs to be looked at. There will be considerable time needed to repair our world image, particularly if we have a president that wants to meet personally with foreign leaders. We will still need to fund the war in Iraq while we are bringing troops home. We will need to repurchase equipment lost or left in Iraq. We may have the additional costs of increasing the military by 100,000 men. There is a good chance that a lot of the damage the Bush administration left us with still needs to be *discovered*. We need some sort of national health care plan.

We will have a large national debt, and a large deficit.

Ending the war, ending the tax cuts for the wealthy... I don't think that will be enough.

Democrats will either have to balloon the deficit and debt or make a *lot* of cuts, each needing to be examined carefully by the new administration.

It will cost a lot of money, and take a lot of time.

Let's be easy on our expectations of or candidates and our representatives. Turning this thing around will be a slow process. Keep faith.