On a mostly party line vote, Republican Senators voted to increase the federal debt ceiling from $8.18 trillion to $8.97 trillion. Your share of that is $30,406.77. Having a wife and two children, my family’s share is $121,627.08. I’d better get the boy to work pretty quickly.
This is the fourth time lawmakers have raised the cap since President George W. Bush took office. The cap strikes me as pretty meaningless if lawmakers are just going to raise the limit every year. I think we can pretty well conclude that the Bush tax structure is not sufficient to meet the demands of the government under the Bush administration. I’d suggest at least returning to the Clinton tax structure and see how that goes. Obviously the government under the Bush administration is also spending more than it did under the Clinton administration, so some cuts would also be in order.
I have a proposal. Anytime a Democrat uses the Republican talking-point, “Tax Cut”, we cut off a digit.
Republicans including the now sainted Reagan variety do not believe in “Tax Cuts”, they believe in “Tax Shifts”. A true Tax Cut is when you match a drop in projected tax revenue with decrease in public spending liablities, or when you find an actually more efficient means of providing a public good or service. Likewise, pawning off a public asset like the Tollroad with the intent of having futuring generations buying it out of hock at a later date is not a tax cut nor is it privatization, it is a Tax Shift.
Flat tax everyone. Take some standard % off all income over a certian level. No exceptions. Put the IRS out of a job. Finally, keep it % at a level that pays OFF the entire debt, then adjust it after we have paid off the national debt.
Last time I checked, we pay something like $0.25 of every tax dollar to intrest on the debt. Want a 25% tax cut? Pay off the debt!
Is it any surprise so many Americans are in so much personal debt?
BTW, I think both parties are just as rotten on this subject. Dems want the rich to pay a higher %, not just higher amount. The rich never do, they have so many loopholes. Repubs try to even the % load, but they don’t elminate the loopholes either. Both create more complex ways for those that can hire tax help to pay less.
Also, I remember when we finally had a budget in the black with Clinton. I never heard either side say how we would pay off the debt! One side wanted to redirect the money to other programs, the other wanted to give more refunds. They both acted like it was such a terriable thing to start paying off the debt? Why?
Jason,
‘Why’ you ask? That’s easy. Politicians who have the balls to be the bad guy (you know, the ones who raise taxes AND cut spending) don’t get re-elected. It will take a whole capitol buliding full of representatives who are willing to “fall on their own swords” before the problem gets fixed.
Speaking as a pragmatist, I can tell you that balancing a budget is NOT a job best left to politicians. It almost screams for a fourth branch of government comprised entirely of accountants. On that note, I heard Enron let a few go a while back…
ADK
We hear a lot of talk about cutting the deficit in half. In fact they have talked about it as far back as I can remember. I am 49 years old and I simply cannot remember a surplus year, can you? Who has been running this country, the politicians or the voters? I hear people complain, but do we ever take action?
There are two sets of books our politicians like to keep, the General and Unified budgets. The Unified Budget includes every government expense while the general budget excludes social security and Medicare. Social Security has its own dedicated tax, which by law cannot be used to pay for anything but Social Security costs, United States Code Title 42, Chapter7, Subchapter VII, Sec. 911 (a). Social Security can buy US Treasuries just like you or I, but the money must be repaid. Currently the Social Security Trust fund owns $1.6 Trillion in Special US Treasuries, which is included in the $8 Trillion National debt.
Politicians like to use the Unified Budget because they can show a lower deficit number. For example in 2004 Bush and our Representatives passed a Unified Budget resulting in a $553.6 billion deficit. The problem is they included Social Security and Medicare taxes as well as the interest their trust funds earned, which are dedicated to paying Social Security and Medicare costs, not general budget items. Excluding these dedicated tax revenues and interest payments, the General Budget deficit was $726.1 Billion. Who wants to report bad news to those you represent? We might not vote for them in the next election. Then again, maybe it is us, we simply do not want to hear the bad news and keep asking for more government services.
In 2005 there was Katrina and now we have the Rx Medicare drug program. The deficit this year is going to be what, $800 Billion? Interest on the Debt in 2005 was over $450 Billion or 40 cents of every dollar you pay in Federal Income Taxes. In 1952 only 16 cents went to pay interest on the debt.
The problem is, they could eliminate the unified budget deficit and we would still have a very large general budget deficit. Its time we laid off these fuzzy math politicians for our sakes as well as our children. Can anyone just say no to two more years?
Did you remember the interest payments on the National Debt? The interest payments alone are hundreds of billions of dollars per year, costing the U.S. more than the entire annual defense budget.
If your job has been outsourced and you’ve got lots of free time to kill, stare vacantly at the National Debt Clock. Watch the U.S. go ever so slowly down the drain.
Maybe I don’t feel like being taxed enough to pay off the debt. I would be happy to pay off some portion that was accrued since I’ve been of voting age, minus some amount for the tax cuts the wealthy got that I didn’t. I suggest we stick it to the boomers who gave us the Reagan/Bush deficits, and the rich who got massive tax cuts in the last few years. Let’s have those who ran up the debt actually pay the debt.
I just see this coming to a point where we’ll “all have to pitch in together”, when the bastards who ran this up are all conveniently dead or retired, or have moved to their Caymans hideaway.
I can’t speak to any of the other things he stands for, but it was nice to see Mike Pence of Indiana at least attempting to question the logic of this change.
That reminds me. I don’t regard the Senate Democrats as having shown any particular valor in opposing the amendment. It was nice to see them tweak the Republicans a bit, but the debt ceiling had to be raised to avoid default and more serious consequences.
The harm isn’t in the debt ceiling, obviously. The harm is in the debt. So they all rise or fall based on how they have voted with respect to spending, and how they have voted with respect to taxes — the worst combination being votes for tax cuts (really tax shifts, as llamajockey points out) coupled with votes for spending increases.
Isnt raising the national debt limit necessary so that govt can continue? It simply says that legally the govt is responsible for the debt.
I’m one of those fiscal conservatives and social liberals,so WHAT is cut( not just cutting) is always an issue with me. The gimmick conservative republicans have used since Reagan is simply to cut taxes without specifying programs so everyone then has to fight it out for money left over in a sort of ‘culture war’.Today’s conservatives never actually ‘cut’ anything.So we invariably have welfare mothers fighting for money against military spending etc.,and guess who has the most organized lobbying advocacy? Any wonder why the country is so cynical and divided? Everything is a ‘CHOICE’
It’s always just a money fight and the fittest beats the weakest.
Can’t we ONCE just sit down and figure out WHAT program is important and fund it up to the quality it should be? any program,it doesnt matter. It would be a start , and a new way of thinking.But I suppose I can answer my own question and say ‘this is how democracy works’.
Here’s something thought provoking –
The next time you hear a politician use the word “billion” in a casual manner; think about whether you want the “politicians” spending your tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
a. A billion seconds ago it was 1974.
b. A bit over a billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
c. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
d. A billion days ago no one walked on the earth on two feet.
e. A billion dollars ago was only 3 hours and 30 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let’s take a look at New Orleans – It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean? Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516, 528. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1, 329,787 Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012. Washington, D.C.!!!
Are all your calculators broken????
Maybe everyone should just flood their houses, then we can all be on the “big easy” street for the rest of our lives, and forget about working, and paying taxes and all that useless stuff!
It certainly ISNT the money that’s the issue.
We should treat Social Security ‘reform'(only one example) as if it were the Iraqi war: Fund it off the balance sheet,and demonize the critics.