The ‘parade’ concluded at the end of the third week of its run. By then, Arkhan had become roughly 25 years and most of a month old, and while there were some that wanted the party to continue for a while longer, it was painfully obvious that too much of the budget had been spent on the celebration. The excellent progress made towards the goal of erasing the national debt had been tarnished by the excessive expenditures made during the roughly three and a half weeks of celebrations. Several of the numerous groups of systems, or ‘Sectors’ as they were called, had to cut back on non-vital spending just to make ends meet and avoid their Sectors having to file for bankruptcy.

Arkhan had no one to blame for this but himself. His own abilities had, rather unfortunately, turned his nation’s people into a massive cult that absolutely adored him to a fault. The fact that they, unlike himself, didn’t see anything wrong with the expense reports that he had to read after the party further drove home the point that, in Arkhan’s perspective, he and his wife may well have been the only truly ‘sane’ people in his entire nation. At the very least he was glad that everything he did wasn’t immediately reported on a big, breaking news. If things ever got to the point where him taking a daily shit was considered headline-worthy news, Arkhan would have broken down in horror.

Thankfully, things were not that way and the massive religion dedicated to him did not appear to be getting any crazier and/or more radical. Yet.

Still, as things stood the massive nationwide celebration had increased Arcadia’s national debt by roughly seventy-four trillion Galactic Credits, the modern equivalent of the U.S. government having a total national debt of 1.014 trillion Dollars and then throwing a massive, several week long party at the cost of over three fourths of what would have been the total national budget while still spending the normal amount other things.

After having finally managed to get back home and end the party, Arkhan was tired from all the stress of it. Making speeches was never his forte, as he would tend to ramble and follow a kind of ‘train of thought’ manner of speaking. He also had a relatively tough time dealing with the massed hordes of rabid fangirls and fanboys that would occasionally try to storm any place he stopped by during the ‘parade’. Seeing so many people gave him flashbacks to when, in his previous life, he had to serve in the front lines during the infamous yearly war that was Black Friday.

The horror, the horror.

But, with all of that and more now done, he was back at his home, safe and sound, and ready to overcome the hurdle that was the still quite massive national debt. He had ideas as to how to help cut budget expenses on things such as the ever-vital infrastructure expenses. He could allow his Zaku Tanks and Construction Balls to take over some of the more difficult and dangerous construction and maintenance jobs, all while having the normal contractors add the finishing touches and making sure everything was up to code. That way a bit of the budget normally paid to the contract construction companies for their work on constantly repairing and upgrading the infrastructure could be lessened while giving those contractors the leeway needed to let them work for other groups.

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If not all of their attention and manpower was spent on civil and government projects, they could take that excess manpower and attention and focus it on civilian projects for the time being. To make certain this would happen, he offered temporary tax breaks to construction companies that increased in duration for each project they finished in a set period of time with no accidents or code violations taking place. Other restrictions were also in place, but those were the more publicly known ones.

Arkhan intended to cut as much spending as was needed but without cutting too much and triggering an economic snowball effect. He knew that to make money you had to spend money, and thus while he did cut the budget for things like the military (using his summoned creations to fill the gap while parts of the military lay in storage) and construction (see above for how he managed that) he focused a bit of that freed up money into Education (because you can’t run a good economy on uneducated and illiterate people with no ability to advance in society due to not being qualified for jobs) and social services (because some people stay at home and don’t work because no one else will care for their loved ones or simply lack the means to travel for work).

At last, he was finished with his ideal budget plan, Arkhan did the smart thing and, rather than simply put it in place, ran it by those more knowledgeable in economics than himself. Of course, most of his plan was idealism, so most of it had to be scrapped. Arkhan did not think that his plan would go through in any way, shape or form at all, fully expecting it to be utterly destroyed by the greater knowledge and understanding of those more suited to writing a decent budget. He was honestly quite surprised that the new budget did implement some of his idealistic plans, though each surviving one existing in a greatly altered way.

When Arkhan got the projected forecast that compared his overly naïve view on spending to the new budget (which managed to pass through the senate quite easily), Arkhan’s jaw dropped at the difference. If he had forced his plan through it would potentially have put the nation in even more debt, while the new budget looked to be a slow but steady climb in terms of tax revenue. Arkhan praised himself for doing the smart thing and letting his idealism be tempered by the realism of those more suited to the job than he and promised himself that, should he get any other bright ideas about anything he would run it by those far more educated than himself.