As of close of business on July 31, 2014, our debt has risen to $17,618,599,653,160.19. That crippling level of debt is itself astonishing but what is equally astonishing is that $7 trillion of that debt has been added in just the five and a half years of the Obama Administration. That $7 trillion is more than the debt accumulated from George Washington through Bill Clinton combined.
I remain in disbelief over the continued spending of Congress and the White House — I was also critical of George W. Bush who was not a fiscal conservative and the wars launched under his leadership contributed to these costs. Despite this mounting debt, neither the Congress nor the White House hesitated to send hundreds of millions more to Israel to pay for part of its defense or billions to places like Afghanistan and Iraq despite the loss of over $4 trillion in those wars.
I readily admit that I am more conservative on spending and taxes than many on this blog. However, I am not fanatically against debt as a concept. I just object to the cavalier attitude toward spending and more importantly the lack of priority. The greatest national security threats in this country are not Afghanistan or Iraq but our crumbling public education system, underfunded science and environmental programs, and such growing menaces as pandemics like Ebola.
As recent report showed that the level of waste in rebuilding Afghanistan alone is far greater than previously thought. John Sopko, the inspector general charged with monitoring aid sent by the U.S. to Afghanistan, found billions of dollars more wasted in Afghanistan. One small example are two $40.5 million C-130 transport planes that the U.S. government gave the Afghan Air Force even though it cannot use the planes. Such moronic forms of waste result in a shocking finding that of $10.6 billion in funding review, nearly $7 billion was potentially wasted. Yet, the money continues to pour in and no one is held accountable for the waste or stupidity. No one accept the American people who will pass this debt on to our children.
Here is the actual debt numbers from the government: Treasury
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?_r=0 ” Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
This was clearly true of the debt incurred to win World War II. Taxpayers were on the hook for a debt that was significantly bigger, as a percentage of G.D.P., than debt today; but that debt was also owned by taxpayers, such as all the people who bought savings bonds. So the debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. In particular, the debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history.
But isn’t this time different? Not as much as you think.
It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.”
JT, your article focuses on the present but fails to include various other factors: proportion of debt to GNP now versus other times, squandering of the surplus by the three stooges, momentum, that will continue for some time, of the catastrophe(s) created by the three stooges (spending on the mess(s) created by the three stooges can not be simply cut off nor can the after effects be eliminated), inability of government to make necessary moves to improve education, health care, etc due to the political blocking of the President by the republicans, etc., etc., etc.
Obama is partly to blame but taken in context he is not the reason we are in this financial mess.
isaac – so if Obama is not to blame for this mess who is?
I think that Krugman and Steiglitz are much more qualified than Prof Turley in economic matters. This is simply an illiterate talking point for the GOP which has not much weight, especially since they had no problem running up that debt to unheard of heights. To give some perspective, the US debt to GDP ratio at the end of WWII was 120%. Then we spent even more billions in the Marshall Plan and defense spending. Now it is 70% according to the CIA fact book. Then we can look at Japan which has a ratio of 243% right now. So while there is no question that this growing debt is not something we need or want, it is not a catastrophic level now.
randyjet – when you consider that FDR DID NOT get the US out of the depression either with the New Deal or WWII and 1946 was a depression year, I am not sure why we were spending money we did not have.
Jonathan, I have always followed you and listened to your wise opinion. As to the debt, how much of this $7 trillion increase was debt that was being carried off budget for war spending during the Bush Administration, and what portion was the cost for Part D Medicare???
Could you provide a breakdown please…just wondering!
lol – Dredd, your so into the dread of those who swear others shall not tread
As all can see – there’s more than one way to snork a bot….
I doubt even this most knowledge Professor could have a well informed discussion on the ellipsis of the change from Legal Tender in Payment of Debt to the current (illicit standard) of Legal Tender for All Debts Public and Private
It is Canon Law that controls our Central Banks back to Switzerland.
We all – you and I – are subrogated to legal fictions via our own naivete!
AMAZING!
The words Mor-gan with G-old is a bot stopper!
These debts are obviously the result of the War on Whites that has been revealed by the ignorati party –as Gov. B. Jindal has called it.
Once THE J.P. Mor-gan successfully obliterated the G-old Std;
then ALL forms of negotiable instruments substituted for legal tender
Illicitly (as per Canon/U.S. law) – so.
Terry, Thanks.
Okay – the censor bots are getting ridiculous today…
Once “the” J.P. Morgan successfully obliterated the Gold Std;
then “all” forms of “negotiable” instruments substituted for “legal tender”.
I doubt even this most knowledge Professor could have a well informed discussion on the ellipsis of the change from “Legal Tender in Payment of Debt” to the current (illicit standard) of “Legal Tender for All Debts Public and Private”.
It is Canon Law that controls our Central Banks back to Switzerland.
We all – you and I – are “subrogated” to legal fictions via our own naivete!
LaserDLiquidator, I retrieved your comment at 8:49.
Nick,
Ross Perot is still alive. Age 84, worth about $3.8 billion. I met him a few times. He said politics is a dirty business. Steer clear of it.
Where is a diminutive, cackling, psychotic, 3rd party candidate who understands the horrific consequences of the debt, like Ross Perot, when you need him? Is he still alive? I do see the cultists have already brought up Reagan and W, how about Ike..do I hear Ike?
Nick – It is important to deflect from the reality that is Obama.
I’m amazed humanity’s made it this far.
RWW – when the debt has increased more under Obama, he takes the blame.
In percentage terms, Reagan increased the debt more than Obama but that is really beside the point. I don’t understand, Jonathan, how you can attribute the increase to Obama rather than Bush’s tax cuts and war spending; and are you really saying that we needed less fiscal stimulus over the past seven years?
It will only grow larger. At some point the government will be forced to simply print money and quit running it through a “debt” matrix. The actual deficit, which includes unfunded “promises ” like Medicare, is somewhere around $100 trillion.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Just wait … it is like population increase … non-linear increase.
Once debt is perceived to be money, and money is something one prints out of thin air, it joins the Newspeak, Doublespeak, and Groupspeak dictionary of the propagandists.
The sky is the limit then.