:zz: No, it doesn't.

And some members of Congress have to realize that slashing spending doesn't help balance the budget when they keep markedly cutting our income at the same time, too.

"Slashing spending with a chainsaw" means bridges are going to fall down and kill people, and highways will be filled with potholes, btw. Not to mention the old people dying homeless and ill in the streets.

Be careful what is wished for, because the reality and consequences counts, too.

I don't have to wish for it. It will happen as the spending is unsustainable by a wide margin.

....and you're the one calling the Reps "fearmongers"?

This Just In!
 

Treasury will raid govt employees pension funds to offset debt ceiling raise!

BOY...I guess it bites working for the gubamint!

We have already have had bridges fail and kill people due to infrastructure problems, and many more are still being used that shouldn't be. That is not manufactured lies.

If we eliminate Medicare and Social Security we certainly will go back to our previous reality, of old people dying of preventable problems on the street, homeless. That is not manufacture lies to scare people, either.

It's the truth.

We want a certain lifestyle in America, and it's expensive. We can either agree to pay for it, or give it up.

Gee, that can't be true - too many people have been saying there is no "real" consequences to not raising the debt ceiling.

You know, we'll just pay the interest, and pick and choose what to pay, or just pay interest, and the cash flow afforded by our credit (the debt ceiling) isn't needed ...

Welcome to the consequences.

I understand what you're saying, but the headlines are screaming otherwise

That was sarcasm ;)

Look - I am all for cutting wasteful spending. One of the things I especially like about the PPACA is that it cuts out 500 million in wasteful duplicate Medicare payments to help pay for itself.

But we are a country of 330+ million, and we want a first-world lifestyle. There is plenty to re-prioritize of course, and plenty we can cut, but we are caught in the basic political fights of demagoging societal needs and the involvement of the government (it would be far cheaper to all of us to have single payer healthcare for every single person in the country, for example)

You can't live within a society, yet want that society to keep entirely out of it's members lives. It simply is impossible by the definition of living within a society.

Look to what is happening in Greece, England, etc to see what happens when you demagogue political views over reality.

Those bridges were paid for to be maintained, and instead of doing it right, we had "5 guys watching one guy shovel" for those jobs. Patronage galore, with no incentive to get done sooner - since the jobs were paid a daily rate for as long as it took.

Medicare and Social Security are both Ponzi scheme time bombs. They will not be maintained over the long term because they cannot be. This is academic.

We want a certain lifestyle - but if we cannot afford it or have been using unlimited borrowing to sustain it, we do not have a right to it and it will not continue.

But the answer is not simply black and white: to eliminate fixing bridges, or completely eliminate Medicare or Social Security in my view.
Is that the answer in your view?

I'm certainly not trying to be black and white - but the decision to spend or not spend, is equally binary in nature. We must get to where the revenue exceeds the expenditures. I think we agree there. But I also agree with many who say that taxes simply cannot go any higher without hurting whatever feeble recovery is going on. Therefore, expenditures must be cut in order to get positive cash flow. Once we have that cash flow, the difference can be thrown against the debt.

The Medicare and Social Security Ponzi schemes are separate in that they should never have been enacted in their current forms in the first place. They also, independent of their systemic unsustainability, do contribute a major drag to our efforts to pay down the debt. If they can be fixed to truly be non-ponzian (not just delaying the inevitable, but making them solvent), fine. Otherwise, we should begin the phase out. We have to.

If the creditors no longer loan to us, the decision has been made for us, and the game is over.

You're right, I think we both agree on the result that is needed. I think we differ on the way of getting there.

I don't want "the decision to be made for us" by not raising the debt ceiling. I think the permanent ramifications of that (forever increasing our personal interest rates on homes, cars, federal debt, negative impacting our bond ratings, etc) will take us out of first world status.

I don't want my grandchildren to be paying 2 percentage points more in interest on their house loans because the GOP wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 (which would be the case even if at that time our government was small and spending well within a budget)

We sure could use the Trillion dollars we have spend in Iraq.

Sigh. Yeah.

Or, it would have been nice to simply pay for it at the time, by raising our taxes a little to pay for it.

Also, we sure could use what we spent to fund the Medicare Prescription benefit that was passed into law, rather than not figuring out how to pay for it at the time.

Also, it was probably not a good idea to also, at the time, cut our income by giving a big tax cut to wealthy citizens, while we spent more money on those two things.

Sigh. Gee whiz, how did we get here, in this financial morass? :(

Wait! I know how to start fixing it! Let's take away our ability to have ready cash flow to pay our bills, and say we will no longer pay our compounding and ever-increasing interest on our debt! That will show our creditors we are serious.

Yea act like a crack addict and apply for more credit. That will show our creditors (China). Like a normal american family in financial trouble credit cards need to be cut in half and we need to make due with what we have. No more money for Fannie, Freddie or USPO or any of our other deadbeat relatives.

The debt ceiling is far more than just a credit card, Dell. That is certainly NOT what it's main purpose is. There seems to be some misunderstanding, that the debt ceiling is "that's all we can spend". No. That is NOT it's purpose.

Freezing it doesn't keep us only spending a certain amount, like some arbitrary limit to "paycheck" income - it makes us default on our loans because we can't pay, because we don't have the ebb and flow capability within our own financial systems and internationally to transfer money readily to meet our obligations. Can you understand the difference?

To do what you wish, we would need billions in cash literally sitting in a bank somewhere. You understand that doesn't exist, that's not how it works, right?

Aya, yup :D :tro:

Oh I know it will pass, freddie, fannie and the PO will be bailed out once again, Pakistan will get its aid etc etc etc. and the 60% of households who pay taxes will again argue who will pick up the tab!

Sickening

If the debt ceiling is raised then the Dems will spend more money that this country doesn't have. How could the debt be cut? Send the troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan, and quit this so-called fued with Libya. Ever time Nato or the UN cries for this country's help like they do all the time, help out a little bit but this county shouldn't be the country that is paying the most of the time for t
their causes.

While you're at it, bring home the troops from South Korea and Eastern Europe also. The Korean War and World War II, respectively, were a looong time ago.

Remember a couple of years ago when we had to bear the Democratic talking point "America's addiction to oil", as if an engine is addicted to the fuel it is designed to use? In this case it's more along the lines of "Congress' addiction to your tax dollars." They just can't stop themselves from spending, like the crack addict mentioned a couple of posts previous to this.

Very well spoken.

please, read this article. i'm for lowered spending, but not cutting ones nose off to spite ones face. the debt ceiling must be raised.

http://www.slate.com/id/2294209/


some excerpts:


The ceiling relates only to the total amount of debt the Treasury is allowed to issue. In and of itself, it does nothing to constrain spending, raise taxes, or otherwise improve the country's fiscal situation.



The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office may have explained the dangerous pointlessness of the debt ceiling best: "By itself, setting a limit on the debt is an ineffective means of controlling deficits because the decisions that necessitate borrowing are made through other legislative actions," it writes. "By the time an increase in the debt ceiling comes up for approval, it is too late to avoid paying the government's pending bills without incurring serious negative consequences."

Yet, in the past decade or two, the ceiling has transformed from useless political relic to handy political football: Whenever the country comes close to hitting the limit, the opposition party—whether Republican or Democratic—seizes the opportunity to thwack the other side and refuses to vote to lift it.

At some point, Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling. Until it does, Treasury is moving money around to continue meeting the country's obligations. But it can only do so until Aug. 2. Then, the country will start to default. That might mean not sending out Social Security checks. Eventually, it might even mean failing to make scheduled coupon payments on bonds—raising the possibility of throwing the world markets into turmoil and causing a worse economic crisis than the recession itself.

yeah, we're going to leave korea, thus inviting the north and perhaps china to try to expand their influence...then there's japan, who thru treaties after ww2 is severely limited to ship size, numbers, overal military strength, etc. let's leave there too. i'm sure they'd be safe from the above mentioned...

as for europe, absolutely. let's get out of there as well. nato doesn't need us. after all, it's not like we want bases in foreign countries to have jump-off points if they were needed. it's purely to waste money. and supply lines? bah, who needs 'em?



:rolleyes:

I think they should vote to remove the cap. All they need to do is tax the **** out of the workers and give the money to all the people that have lived most, if not all, of their lifes on the public tit. Those are the people that voted our lovely president in and the more they get the more they will vote for him.
OOPS..I must be a racist for questioning our almighty pres.

Not really

Dont let JMS62 see your post. He will say you are a racist.

Nobody said that the South Koreans can't get armed and defend themselves. They've had about 60 years to do that, and unlike when we defended them the first time, they make all the steel, not us.

NATO's original purpose was to counteract the Warsaw Pact alliance backed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no more. Modern day Russia is not expansionistic. The Warsaw Pact is dissolved. Some of the original members of the Pact have actually joined NATO. So why are we still supporting (and spending on) it?

:tro:

Stop it Zig. The lightbulb might go off in some of these heads and that truly would be a waste of energy.

OK, jumping off from your point though, it sounds like "we need to borrow more or we'll default on our existing debt." That doesn't make much sense. If that is literally true, we are already done.

Not necessarily racist...just ignorant.

Just to be clear. Your track record of postings NOT your anti Obama stance defined you as a racist..

Waste of your time to post that. Some don't want to learn anything about the debt ceiling that interfers with what they have been told to think.

Go read 'Zig's article, and learn how and why we issue Treasury bonds.

Let's have a dose of reality with this silly meme, and put it to rest once and for all with the truth. What have the Democrats spent? Historically (since 1950's) we can compare them to Republicans, and it's not very pretty, nor very favorable.

What have the Dems spent in the past two years, Joey? Look that up, and get back to me on if our regular spending has increased or decreased, and what our budget has done.

And, let's look at where our national debt has increased, and what has had a great influence on the fiscal problems we now find our selves within:

2012 United States federal budget - $3.7 trillion (submitted 2011 by President Obama)
2011 United States federal budget - $3.8 trillion (submitted 2010 by President Obama)
2010 United States federal budget - $3.6 trillion (submitted 2009 by President Obama)
2009 United States federal budget - $3.1 trillion (submitted 2008 by President Bush)
2008 United States federal budget - $2.9 trillion (submitted 2007 by President Bush)
2007 United States federal budget - $2.8 trillion (submitted 2006 by President Bush)


Since the 2012 budget is out I posted it. So comparing the last 3 years of Bush to the first 3 of Obama we have a difference of $2.3 trillion. Only it's the current president who is leading. No doubt we need to raise the debt ceiling. I suppose some on the Titanic drank and partied as they went down.

Please see the information I posted, above. And take the wars out of your spending figures, only "regular spending" here, please, as I stated in my post (hint - it has gone down markedly starting the first year Obama was in office)

If you want to get rid of waste, seems like Obama's the one you want (btw, he also found a few billion in duplicate Medicare payment waste that will now go to paying for the PPACA, which is entirely self-funding (zero net budget increase)

For example:
I spent my whole life wanting fiscal conservatism and reasoned social responsibility from my government. I spent decades voting Republican under the grossly mistaken impression that's what they stand for, and what they would do for the country. History shows I was wrong. The GOP is a fiscal disaster for us. No more. They brought us to the brink of collapse, yet they still want to keep repeating their Reaganomics mistakes.

Do bailouts count? Why not just compare discretionary spending numbers?

Define "regular spending". If it is a subset of total spending, it is meaningless. The total must be the focus, as the deficits and accumulated debt are a function of the total.

As I said, leave the wars out of the budget. Everything else. Non-military spending. What do you think of our national debt increases?