John Bailey for State Delegate

Most of you know that I am a public high school teacher.  I teach government and law.  In my government class we are currently in the economics unit, which is great since it corresponds with the budget debates in Annapolis.  Today’s lesson was on fiscal policy and the main theme was how as an individual you can’t spend more money then you make because you will go into debt.  The students understood that concept and they all seemed to agree that it makes sense not to spend more money then you make.  The follow up question we were to teach the students was in the form of a scenario.  Let’s say the government plans on bringing in X amount of dollars for the year, but ends up bringing in X amount less than they thought, what should the government do to fix this problem?  Overwhelmingly my 10^th grade students who are either 15 or 16 years old said that the government should spend X amount less money so the government is not in debt.  To this I responded, wouldn’t it just be easier to raise a tax to make up the money the government needs.  The students thought that this might be a good idea as long as they were not the ones having to pay the tax.  I then asked them who should pay the tax, their response was, “the people who made the budget mistake.”  If only it was that easy.