With the presidential election only days away, it is important to make sure that we understand what each president is bringing to the table. Mitt Romney, for example, is promising to lower our country’s deficit. How does he plan on doing so?

By cutting spending. One place Mr. Romney believes it would be immoral not to cut spending is on FEMA (Disaster Relief).

Mitt Romney:

“Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”

When asked by debate moderator John King, “Including disaster relief, though?”

Mitt Romney responded:

“We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.”

The problem is that Mitt Romney does not realize that the wellbeing of the people, the citizens of the country that he wishes to lead, is worth spending money on. The recent disaster caused by hurricane Sandy ought to drive the weight of Romney’s words straight home.

Thousands of people are left without electricity, without food, heat or clean water to drink. It is already difficult now to help the people that need help with the current budget allotted to FEMA- what will happen when it is cut almost entirely? People will have to fend for themselves. Some may make it, but most won’t.

Romney plans to cut spending across the board and to cap government spending to 20% of GDP- while boosting military spending by 4%. By the year 2022, keeping Medicare exempt from cuts, the total cuts that Romney plans on initiating will be 34%. Unfortunately, chances are that Romney will plan to cut Medicare too- making the total cuts by the year 2022 up to 53%!

Who exactly is the want-to-be president trying to lead? If another hurricane hits and we lose almost all Disaster Relief support, and we lose Medicare benefits, who will be left to lead?

Furthermore, are we, as U.S. citizens supposed to just sit back while the rest of the world suffers from Tsunamis and Earthquakes because we are more interested in lowering our deficit than saving the lives of thousands? Are dollars worth more than the lives of millions of human beings? Mitt Romney won’t admit that- but his policies seem to prove such.

Preston Waters | Elite.