Subscribe by RSS
In order to avoid an uncomfortable situation in which the federal government runs out of money next year, Democrats have called for raising the national debt limit an additional $1.8 trillion. Keep in mind, this used to be a “debt limit” though now it seems to be a mere suggestion in the face of President Obama’s wasteful spending programs.
Forbes reports:
WASHINGTON — A House Democratic leader says Congress will have to permit at least $1.8 trillion in additional federal borrowing next year to avoid a default on the U.S. debt.
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer said an increase in the so-called debt limit would have to be in the neighborhood of $1.8 to $1.9 trillion in order to allow the government to borrow enough money to keep operations afloat through December of next year.
Democrats are struggling to pass an increase in the $12.1 trillion debt before the end of the year.
To win the votes of moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats, Hoyer pledged to advance strict budget rules aimed at offsetting tax cuts or new spending programs next year with offsetting cuts or revenue hikes.
It is very dangerous to me seeing that our government needs to go deeper in debt to avoid default next year on our debt. Essentially we are borrowing more to keep up with our rate of borrowing. Someone needs to stand up and change this disaster-in-waiting. In the current situation, the answer to everything coming from the Democrats is higher taxes, new fees and increased regulation. They have no intention of cutting spending, they only intend to increase control and taxation.
At a rate where we are borrowing to pay for our borrowing, I am astounded that our political leaders dare to show their faces in public when they are asking the American people to “tighten their belts” during this “deep” recession.
More on the national debt in general from Truth in the Elections:
Nonpartisan financial experts tell us that our nation faces a unique set of pressures (to spend increasing amounts on health care, to sustain retirees’ benefits with fewer active workers, and to fund the growing amount of interest on the national debt) that could culminate in a massive economic crisis.
Bob Bixby, the head of the Concord Coalition, points out that no one can predict when this crisis will erupt—or if it will unfold as “a long, slow erosion in the standard of living.” To each of us, that would mean less choices in life, less freedom, and less of the things we take for granted each day.
With its shaky financial position and dozens of unfunded promises, the United States also faces threats to national security. With its financial assets in quicksand, the US would be less able to compete on an international level and less able to counter threats from competitors abroad. As our nation slips deeper and deeper into debt, it loses its flexibility, its power, and even its ability to operate on a very basic level.
The bottom line: the national debt matters because we, the people, are the ones who pay the bills. We are the ones who will be impacted by a financial crisis. That’s why it is crucial to spread the Truth in 2010.
When the debt “limit” can be changed at anytime, I guess it really isn’t a limit per se.
Visit the You Decide Politics Store »
Loading ...
OH FOR THE GOOD OLD CHEAP DAYS OF BUSH AGAIN..
…“a check of historical tables compiled by the Office of Management and Budget shows that the spending (Bush) that so distressed Pelosi and Reid seems downright modest today. “
“Obama’s trillions dwarf Bush’s ‘dangerous’ spending”
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
February 24, 2009
“Pelosi and Reid called Bush’s budgets “dangerous” and “unpatriotic,” but with Obama, they’ve changed their tune”
“Back in 2006, when Democrats were hoping to win control of the House and Senate, party leaders worked themselves into a righteous outrage over the issue of out-of-control federal spending. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the Republican budget “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” because it increased the amount of U.S. debt held by foreign countries. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of going on “an unprecedented and dangerous borrowing spree” and declared GOP leadership “the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country … no other president or Congress even comes close.”
“The current administration would kill to have such small numbers. President Barack Obama is unveiling his budget this week, and, in addition to the inherited Bush deficit, he’s adding his own spending at an astonishing pace, projecting annual deficits well beyond $1 trillion in the near future, and, in the rosiest possible scenario, a $533 billion deficit in fiscal year 2013, the last year of Obama’s first term.”
“And what about the national debt? It increased from $5 trillion to $10 trillion in the Bush years, leading to dramatically higher interest costs. “We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years,” Pelosi said in 2007. “That’s fiscal irresponsibility.”
“Now, under Obama, the national debt — and the interest payments — will increase at a far faster rate than during the Bush years.”
“We thought the Bush deficits were big at the time,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, told me this week as he prepared to attend Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit. “But this is going to make the previous administration look like rank amateurs. We could be adding multiple trillions to the national debt in the first year.”
“At some point last week, the sheer velocity of Obama’s spending proposals began to overwhelm even experienced Washington hands. In the span of four days, we saw the signing of the $787 billion stimulus bill, the rollout of a $275 billion housing proposal, discussion of Congress’s remaining appropriations bills (about $400 billion) and word of a vaguely-defined financial stabilization plan that could ultimately cost $2 trillion. When representatives of GM and Chrysler said they might need $21 billion more to survive, it seemed like small beer.”
“The numbers are so dizzying that McConnell and his fellow Republicans are trying to “connect the dots” — that is, to explain to the public how all of those discrete spending initiatives add up to a previously unthinkable total. Obama’s current spending proposals, Republicans point out, will cost more than the United States spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the general war on terror and Hurricane Katrina in the last seven years. And that’s before you throw in the $2 trillion fiscal stabilization plan.”
“This is big government, man,” McConnell exclaimed, his matter-of-fact manner giving way to sheer amazement. “It makes previous attempts at big government pale in comparison — they’re going to go beyond the New Deal and the Great Society by far.”
“The new spending guarantees that the problems that so disturbed Pelosi and Reid just a couple of years ago — high interest payments and an increasing number of foreign debt-holders — will get worse. Yet so far, the Democratic leaders have refrained from using words like unpatriotic, irresponsible and dangerous to describe Obama’s budget.”
“Of course, they would never use such phrases to attack their own team. But the most important thing to understand about Pelosi and Reid is that while their rhetoric has changed, their substance hasn’t. Back in the Bush days, when they were denouncing Republican over-spending, they were also pushing the congressional leadership to spend more, not less, on just about everything. Now, returned to power, they’re doing the same thing. Only bigger.”
http://www.washingtonexam.....nding.html
Wasn’t there a pay as you go plan by Democrats before ???
December 11, 2009
“Dem leader urges debt limit increase of $1.8-1.9T”
Andrew Taylor
“To win the votes of moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats for the politically unpopular debt limit, Hoyer pledged to attach to the debt limit increase a strict “pay-as-you-go” budget law aimed at ensuring that new tax cuts or new spending programs with don’t increase the deficit.”
“Under a pay-as-you-go regime, if offsetting cuts or revenue hikes are not found to pay for new policies, across-the-board spending cuts would hit selected programs such as farm subsidies and Medicare.”
“On the one hand, about a dozen Senate Democrats say they will not vote for the debt measure unless a commission of lawmakers and administration officials is established to come up with a bill to curb the deficit and to force Congress to vote. That measure is opposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and top Democrats such as Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.”
“In the House, more than 50 Blue Dogs are withholding their votes for the debt limit measure unless they finally win enactment of their pay-as-you-go law.”
“Hoyer said negotiations are underway to try to attach both measures to the debt limit measure.”
“Hoyer also said that the House would seek to extend extend unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the long-term jobless for six months. A one-year extension of the benefits had been under discussion.”
http://www.realclearpolit....._1_9t.html
Besides the $ 500 billion cut to medicare for health care, this could cut medicare even more ???
Least we forget, government jobs cost us more. Private jobs increase government revenue…
“For feds, more get 6-figure salaries”
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
“The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.”
“Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.”
“Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.”
http://www.usatoday.com/n.....ries_N.htm
Today obama is meeting with the ‘fat cat’ bankers. Wanting them to loan money.
Forcing bankers to loan money reminds me of something. Was it our most resent RECESSION ????????
Ask Frank, he’ll know the answer…
How cool would it be if our counter was at zero… This is one thing both Conservative and Liberals have dropped the ball on.