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
Squeeky & Annie;
As anyone can see by the current Cuomo Moreland Commission saga; going after ebol is not the design of heads of state. It simply runs too contrary to the cause of becoming an elected.
That being said, I do concur that Elizabeth Warren would be a great USAG.
Though I’d rather have her as POTUS assigning as USAG she believes in!
Folks, we don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem.
It’s been a pretty open secret for a long time that the Right wing is destroying this country by, among other things, cutting taxes for the rich so greatly as to radically increase the debt, then argue that spending needs to be reined in because of the runaway debt.
Then they cut taxes again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Drown the government in a bath tub. That’s what this is all about.
And if you can squeeze in a war or two, to enrich the MIC, that makes it just dandy. The Cheney-bush regime was the master of this technique.
That is a lot of BS.
You could liquidate all the holdings of the so-called rich, and it still wouldn’t make much of a dent in the debt, or the deficit for that matter.
We don’t have a taxing problem, we have a spending problem. That is the only way we can be solvent as a nation.
We spend like we dont have to pay it back. It is impulsive, instant satisfaction, mentality, when you have the immediate power and dont feel any consequences of irresponsible behavior.
So curb that socialist, forced financial egalitarianism mentality. You blame overspending on not taxing people enough. You can alway overspend beyond what you can tax.
The answer to solving the budget crisis can be found in nature. Analogy is, stop feeding the Piranha.
Watch a Piranha feeding frenzy and you’ll see the similarities. Stripped to the bone. I’m not saying that people are like Piranha…..But……..
Why bother voting Squeeky? Elizabeth Warren might, the chance she will is higher than either Hillary and especially some Tea Party yokel.
bigfatmike,
Your absolutely right! Whenever my family is in trouble financially, we buy a new car to sink us further into debt. Then I take out a personal loan and hand it to the first person I can find who could have gotten a job on their own but now doesn’t need too. I kind of hope we keep putting liberals in the White House so this ship will sink fast vs the slow incremental death that they have been inflicting on us.
As some have pointed out it is impossible to meaningfully discuss the debt without reference to other economic fact such as the size of the economy. People that spout off big numbers about the debt are either ignorant of trying to scare you.
The debt problem is largely an artifact of republican governance. They are the ones who reduced tax rates, fought two wars off the books, and prevented a properly sized stimulus which would have increased economic activity and reduced the size of the debt.
It surprises some people but government spending in the form of a stimulus can decrease the debt by growing the economy and increasing tax revenues. Austerity, paying down the debt, can increase debt by crippling the economy and reducing tax revenues. Many republicans and debt fear mongers simply got facts about the debt wrong.
Much of the debt increase under Obama was due to expenditures on the social safety net. Those expenditures act as a sort of shock absorber for the economy. They kick in when the economy is down and tend to prevent deeper economic decline. The policies acted exactly as they were intended and prevented ever worse economic problems. The usefulness of social safety net expenditures have been recognized by both democrat and republican administrations for decades – until recently when a kind of economic dark ages set in.
If you want to fix the debt then fix the economy first. And remember, people who spout off big numbers about the debt are ignorant themselves or trying to trick you for political purpose.
BFM:
A lot of magical thinking in that post, Mike. M A G I C
Another consideration I am not sure was mentioned (alot of posts to read) is interest payments on the debt.
If the Fed becomes forced to raises rates at some point due to inflation for example, to say 5% and the debt is 20t at that point then over time (as the old treasuries expire and new ones are issued) you would have 1 trillion in interest payments required to be paid which would be about a third of the current federal budget. The interest payments alone would destroy.
This is irrespective of other considerations mentioned.
Am I missing something?
Eleazer:
You did miss my same point, implicit as it may have been.
I predict that aroung $18.5T, the interest will equal the national govt’s income.
There is no way to exit that scenario without a lot of ripping of the system.
It will entail cancelling of debt, stealing from the population, austerity measures, political upheaval. Just a complete snafu at that point.
@annie
Nope. Elizabeth Warren won’t, either. Nobody will unless it is a Tea Party type person. Or whoever our Hitler is going to end up being.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Are those here among U.S. – fully aware of the illegitimacy of current tender?
Novation…
Legal fiction….
Cusip…..
Unconditional Acceptance Accommodation Endorsement….
Darren;
Thanks (though I had already found the root of the glitch & circumvented).
We need more politicians talking about the debt problem, especially Democrats. When Warren Buffett talked about the debt as not a problem early in the recession he did a terrible disservice to the USA. His perspective is very different from those that saw his comment as a green light to spend. We need some old fashion fiscally conservative democrats to address the issue. Politicians are being paid off in many ways. Why else would we send expensive planes that can’t be used. Maybe we could start by turning gifts in funds in the mid-east into loans that might be repaid.
Squeeky, yes he should’ve went after Wall Street with a vengeance. Do you think Hillary would’ve?
“Let us know when YOU win the Nobel prize and ONLY then will I take your opinion as being worth anything.”
And that folks is as intellectually lazy as you can get. The only thing worse is willful ignorance. Either requires absolutely no critical-thinking skills.
Nick Spinelli – “Progressives continually show they are not forward thinking people. They will mortgage their grandchildren’s future for protecting the cult leader today.”
Nick, There are way more important things to the progressives like gay marriage, attacking religion, legalizing pot or anything no PC.
I, like you, am amazed at how fast the deflection to past presidents happens.
To me, running up the debt is all part of the plan. Stealing our property and giving it to the people who can do for themselves so that they can become dependent on the nanny state gives the nanny state the power they crave. Once you have a majority sucking off of the state, you then need to demonize and attack the wealthy. What really stinks is there is no answer to return it back other than collapse.
According to my dad, there was a reason why interest rates were 21 percent during the Carter Administration. It’s because money was in short supply. So what is different between then and now, in as much as money does not seem to be in short supply because interest rates are a mere fraction of 21 percent? The difference is that during the Carter Administration, it was illegal for foreigners to own US debt. It was made legal during the early eighties, giving rise to huge increases in spending during the Reagan administration, in spite of the fact that Reagan had lowered taxes for everyone. Where US debt was owned by Americans during World War 2, now the debt is owned by foreigners. As foreign confidence in the US dollar wanes, as it has been as evidenced by the Russians and Chinese effort to substitute the dollar, US dollars will eventually be in short supply, as with the Carter administration, and interest rates will begin to ratchet up. That will be a time when everyone will want their money in a Swiss bank. Money is already flowing offshore by the well heeled, but so long as the government can continue to borrow from foreigners, it’s not alarmed. You’ll know when borrowing is a problem, when interest rates begin to rise and the government outlaws moving money offshore. None of this has to do with politics, but if you must be partisan, then know that it was the Democratic House and Senate that legalized foreign borrowing.
There is a lot about your post on debt that needs clarification. Debt alone means nothing, but only in comparison to national income. Also, a lot of the debt is held in government itself–we owe it to ourselves. Furthermore, waste in government is not what leads to more debt per se, but misdirected spending on war (always wasteful to high degree) rather than spending on better uses such as education, health, infrastructure, etc. Even spending on the useful things may lead to increased debt, but who cares if our national income is rising faster than that debt. Finally, thank god Obama kept spending during the Great Recession because this helped the economy grown and increase employment. There are a large number of economists who say he should have spent more rather than less.
And Gary, JT is a fiscal conservative and writes about taxes and bureaucracy. He may have worked for the great Bill Proxmire, back when Dems were the party of the people.
GaryT, Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym. Krugman could use some time in the gym. If you Google weasel man I bet his image appears.
Wow, I didn’t know that Prof Turley was also, somewhat, fiscally conservative.
This is another shift I am seeing. I think he is becoming even more libertarian than before. On civil liberties, JT is as libertarian as they come, but now on fiscal issues too. Good to see. Before you know it, he will become another John Stossel 🙂
Obviously no one likes national debt, but some of us understand the core instability it actually represents to our national security.
The debt increases $15K, every second.
Paul Krugman believes that the debt doesn’t matter, because we owe it to ourselves. Paul Krugman, the Noble prize winning economist, sees it all as just numbers. We will all see how purely numerical it is, when all our savings becomes worth the paper it is printed upon. And the price of normal daily commodities inflates to Goodyear Blimp proportions.
Let us know when YOU win the Nobel prize and ONLY then will I take your opinion as being worth anything.
@annie
There wasn ‘t much choice on the deficit. I don ‘t blame Obama for it. I do blame him for not going after Wall Street with a vengeance back in 2009. We are primed for the same thing to happen again. The “recovery” is an illusion.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Nick:
Didn’t know that JT was a fiscal conservative.
I take my cues that isn’t, when he says for example that he agrees with many of Obama’s policies, just not the unconstitutional way he is promulgating them.
Either way, he does appear to be becoming that way.