After college, I moved to New York City and I learned about how devastating deficit spending can really be. Yet it isn’t the deficits that show up on the financial statements there are the real devastating deficits. The more significant deficits are the ones that get hidden from the balance sheets.

The most obvious to me at the time were the 'deferred maintenance’ deficits. These were times when the city, or other institutions, deferred spending necessary to maintain the infrastructure. The money still needed to be spent, and in the end, the costs were often much greater than they otherwise would have been. It’s the old “stitch in time saves nine” issue. Deferred maintenance is saying we can’t afford the stitch right now, so we’ll defer it until we can afford nine stitches later.

Yet there are even more expensive and more deeply hidden deficits. Failing to care for infrastructure adds up quickly. Failing to care for ones citizens adds up even more quickly.

As I work in a community health center, I see this more and more. People who have not had access to health care and defer maintenance of their own bodies, until it is an emergency. If you can’t afford a trip to the doctor or dentist, you will put off dealing with what could often be treated inexpensively until it becomes much more expensive.

This is where the latest proposed cuts by Republicans in the House of Representatives is penny wise and pound foolish. In cutting funding that addresses people’s health issues when they are small and inexpensive, they are increasing the health care deficit that we will have to face when people go to the emergency room. It is cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

The same applies to cuts in education, service programs, and particularly Planned Parenthood. As I’ve been getting more acquainted with the health issues of expectant mothers and then their newborns, I have come to recognize what a great value Planned Parenthood and related organizations are in making sure that mothers get the treatment they need early on in the pregnancy so that costs of delivery and early care can be reduced.

The United States has a much higher infant mortality rate that many other countries, and it is because programs like Planned Parenthood are not properly funded. Those who are especially concerned about the rights of the unborn probably have the greatest responsibility to support organizations like planned parenthood if they are interested in seeing the number of babies that die in our country each year decrease.

Unfortunately, too often, people look just at the headline and just at the bottom line on the balance sheet. They don’t look at reducing the real deficits.