Sobering thoughts on the national debt

[Bailey Guns]

If Congress were to cut $6 billion every three weeks for the next 36 weeks, it would manage to save between now and late November as much money as the Treasury added to the nation’s net debt during just the business hours of Tuesday, March 15.

You can read the rest of the (very short) article HERE. We will NEVER be able to repay $14+ Trillion dollars. I think few people can even comprehend how much that is...I know I can't.

[Mazin]

Yep we're screwed. Thanks for the hope and leaving us with a lil change.

[patrick0685]

ya i cant comprehend that number

[Mtn.man]

We have thrust our grandchildren in to peonage.

[Hoosier]

Dramatically cut spending (including military) and raise taxes. Or, just deflate the dollar to the point where $1T tomorrow = $1B today. Weee!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...idential_terms

Also note the value for inflation keeps increasing. We can keep blaming the President or politicians in congress, but in reality we (and by that I mean people who were old enough to vote since the 80's) haven't had the balls to really elect leaders who were serious about the debt.

I remember seeing a Google Video posted here a while back, which was Reagan before his Presidential bid waxing on about the horror of national debt. Seems ironic, given the facts.



H.

[Bailey Guns]

I'm past the point of playing the blame game. I don't care who did it...I want it stopped and fixed.

And you're absolutely right...no one has the balls to do what it takes. I'm looking at the number of Tea Party backed candidates that voted for this nonsense yesterday...DISAPPOINTED!!!

[Hoosier]

And you're absolutely right...no one has the balls to do what it takes. I'm looking at the number of Tea Party backed candidates that voted for this nonsense yesterday...DISAPPOINTED!!!

I haven't really been convinced the Tea Party is about tax issues since they don't like Ron Paul. He's the only congress critter I've seen that actually walks the walk on budget items.

I'm pretty sure a large portion of Tea Party members are only there to protest the Kenyan born sekret Muslim that scammed his way into the White House.

H.

[nogaroheli]

Dramatically cut spending (including military) and raise taxes.

I'm all for DRAMATICALLY cutting spending, all about it- but you lost me with raising taxes. Raising taxes stifles economic growth, MAYBE you get a short spike in revenue but that's short lived. That revenue doesn't come close to matching what you'd see if you cut taxes and actually leave money in the hands of job and revenue creating businesses (they even us taught that in a hippie state college...)

[sniper7]

basically we need another world war, and china needs to be involved. far as I know, they own most of our debt.
I really don't see, and I don't want taxes to be raised. I also don't see politicians, the fed, states, and local .gov bringing spending down into limits.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I remember seeing a Google Video posted here a while back, which was Reagan before his Presidential bid waxing on about the horror of national debt. Seems ironic, given the facts.

Reagan's willingness to live with the federal debt problem is probably the one big hit I have against his administration but put it in context. When Reagan took office, he faced the horror of a Paper Tiger Army. Massive expenditures were needed to fix the problem he inherited from Carter and reinforce our conventional forces so the nuclear option wasn't our only available option to Soviet aggression.

Fact: Reagan's tax rate decreases actually resulted in increases in federal tax collections. The problem was that Tip O'Neill's Congress submitted omnibus budgets that spent $1.87 for every new dollar taken in. Reagan fought those omnibus spending bills but essentially had Hobson's Choice of accepting O'Neill's budgets or shutting down the government and stopping the military rebuild he saw as essential to bringing down Communism worldwide.

Truth to tell, Reagan's submitted budgets weren't balanced either but O'Neill declared Reagan's budgets DOA and they weren't the monstrousities that O'Neill sent back either. Reagan meant what he said about the horror of the national debt but he felt Communism was an even larger threat to the US in the 80s and I would tend to agree given the level of debt in the 80s versus what the Soviets, Warsaw Pact, Cuba et al were doing from '76 onward.