Mandatory Less Urgent: Fill & Download for Free

It would seem to be a bit excessive at a minimum. At worst, probably unconstitutional as well. Vaccine distribution will be a tricky business, because 1) there wont be enough vaccines for everybody, and,2) everybody wont need to get vaccinated. How will it be decided who gets a vaccine? Possibly by the time a safe and effective vaccine is in wide distribution, sometime late next year, the pandemic may already be over, making widespread vaccinations less urgent? We will need to just wait and see….

Childcare - Daycare/ Nanny; Or if you are a stay-at-home parent, you’ll end up paying for cleaning or mother’s help services just to get a break.Supermarket - Diapers, Toys, Clothes, Shoes, Laundry Detergent, Lotions, Formula/ Breast pads & milk bags, car seats & strollers, crib, high chair , shelves boxes to store toys…Medical - Routine checkups, Vaccines, mandatory eye/ear checkups for school, Therapies & such if needed, Baby vitamins, constipation meds, thermometers, fever meds, bracesTransportation - School, getting to afterschool activities, more money in car cleaning, another seat on a plane trip, bigger likely more gas guzzling carHotels - Little ones count as people, so in cases where fire ratings says ‘occupancy 4 people’ in a room, and you have 3 kids … you’d have to get a second room.Activities & Social - Buying presents for birthday parties you get invited to; Karate/Soccer/Ballet etc. Keeping up with the Joneses “Timmy got a tablet, I want a tablet”.Education - Fundraising cake sale, pizza sale, candle sale, book sale …. ; Scouts cookie sale, popcorn sale; Field trips; Private tuition / math & reading tuition; Savings to help them at university.Housing - You’ll want a bigger place, with a yard, in a good school district. $$$Insurance, Savings & Investments - You’ll start worrying what will happen if you die and want to make sure they are well provided for via a good insurance policy. Retirement will seem far away and less urgent to prep for. That 529 plan I mentioned above.Babies grow up … and so do the expenses.

The national debt is not urgently in need of a solution, but it does need a long-term solution. Unfortunately politicians who are elected for two-year terms don't think long term unless they're in very safe seats.The federal budget is in two parts: mandatory spending, so-called entitlements (which for some reason the Right is trying to demonize even though it simply means money the US is required to pay people because they are entitled to it, i.e. have earned it) and discretionary spending, which is money it can choose to spend or not. Interest on the national debt is part of the mandatory spending, along with military pensions and other money that is rightfully owed to people.When the government wants to run a program that it doesn't want to pay for up-front, it borrows the money. This raises the overall cost of the program because of paying the interest. It also transfers the expense of the program from the discretionary pool to the mandatory pool. This allows the politicians to pretend that they had no choice, because the debt must be paid.The majority of the national debt is actually held by Americans, including the Social Security trust fund. They have loaned money to the government because the government is a good risk. They are simply betting on the economic strength of the United States, its future growth, and the power of the federal government to collect taxes reliably. This can go on indefinitely as long as the US can continue to make the interest payments.However, there's only so much tax money available, and the more we pay out in mandatory spending, the less is available for discretionary spending. At the moment, interest rates are very low, so it does little harm. But if they were to go back up to five or ten percent, it would be very difficult. This is why we need a long-term solution. We can't go on borrowing forever.One thing that would help solve the problem is to close off the tax loopholes that allow the super-rich, and particularly the corporations, to shelter trillions of dollars from taxes in overseas accounts. This is what the recent Panama Papers scandal is about.