I can not afford a new car. I have kids in college, a mortgage, and other things I have to pay for. After the fire I found out my homeowners insurance coverage was not enough on my barn to have it completely rebuilt by someone else so I am finishing it. I am working as a contractor now so, if I take a vacation for a few days I will not get paid for them by my employer. Because I am a contractor I do not have health insurance through the company, I had to get it somewhere else or risk not having any at all. These are my realities, not really hard to understand, you probably have some of the same realities. So why is this so hard for the American people to understand? Maybe it isn’t the people but those we have elected to represent the people. We are broke! We can’t have the shiny new stuff until we pay for the stuff we already have. We can not go out and run up our credit cards without figuring out how to pay them back. There are times of crisis which require us to take on a little more than we can afford, but then we hunker down and figure out how to fix our budget to get back on track. Is this really that hard to understand? And if it is how my budget works, I think everyone else’s is just about the same, including our nation’s!