I am a college student who has recently done some research involving what I believe is a very important topic in our country today, and that is the amount of money that is put into the U.S. elections. It seems every election period there is more and more money spent, yet the country’s deficit keeps getting bigger and bigger. Though many feel all of this money is a way of putting money back into the economy through advertisements on television and radio, etc., I raise the question: Is this the way to actually do this, through these campaigns, or could this money actually be put into our budget to lower the all-time high deficit this country has?

The 2012 U.S. elections were reported to have cost nearly $6 billion, which is an ungodly amount of money. Looking back to the 2008 U.S. elections, which cost $5.3 billion (and was reported to have doubled since the 2004 U.S. elections), the question is “Why?” The money being raised and spent is just gut-wrenching to the average American who sees this country in the worst economic shape it has been in in years. The deficit rises all the time for war, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and national debt, so why does this country make things worse by putting so much money into the U.S. elections? Perhaps they should put all this campaign money toward the deficit and see how the numbers lower over the years.

Jeremy Fuller

Philadelphia

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer