Free Republic

With the additional $231,327,000,000 in taxes that the U.S. Treasury collected in August, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today, President Barack Obama has now presided over more than $20,000,000,000,000 in federal tax collections during the 91 full months he has served in the Oval Office. From February 2009 through August 2016, the Treasury collected approximately $20,197,437,000,000 in tax revenues (in non-inflation-adjusted dollars), according to the Monthly Treasury Statements. During those same 91 months, the federal debt rose from $10,632,005,246,736.97 to $19,510,296,242,765.66—an increase of $8,878,290,996,028.69. …

On Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2016, the national debt is projected to reach $19.3 trillion. With spending on the four biggest budget items -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense -- rising, and GDP growing at 1 percent, future deficits will exceed this year's projected $600 billion. National bankruptcy, then, is among the existential threats to the republic, the prospect that we will find ourselves in the not-too-distant future in the same boat with Greece, Puerto Rico and Illinois. Yet, we drift toward the falls, with the issue not debated. Ernest Hemingway reminded us of how nations escape...

Donald Trump appeared to change his stance on the federal debt Thursday, saying that, with interest rates low, the U.S. should borrow money to spend on infrastructure rather than lowering the $14 trillion federal debt. "This is the time to borrow," the Republican candidate said in an interview on CNBC Thursday morning. "Normally, you would say you want to reduce your debt, and I would like to reduce debt too," Trump said, before explaining that "the problem is you have a military problem, you have an infrastructure problem — a tremendous infrastructure problem, and you have other problems. And also,...

During the 90 full months President Barack Obama has completed serving in the White House—February 2009 through July 2016—the U.S. Treasury collected approximately $19,966,110,000,000 in tax revenues (in non-inflation-adjusted dollars), according to the Monthly Treasury Statements. During those same 90 months, the federal debt rose from $10,632,005,246,736.97 to $19,427,694,579,786.64—an increase of $8,795,689,333,049.67. In July, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today, the federal government took in $209,998,000,000 in taxes and spent $322,813,000,000—running a one-month deficit of $112,815,000,000. So far in fiscal 2016, according the Treasury statement, the federal government has collected approximately $2,678,824,000,000 in taxes and spent approximately $3,192,487,000,000—running...

Bernie's Truth Deficit: So much for Sanders' "Honesty" by Daniel Clark All those conservatives who credit Bernie Sanders with being honest must have been more than a little perplexed by his speech in which he announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. The socialist senator hopped aboard the bandwagon of the quintessential "Wall Street candidate," and if that wasn't enough of a sellout of his alleged principles, he even pretended to care about runaway deficits. During the same speech in which he charged that Donald Trump "would increase our national debt by trillions of dollars," he absolved the sitting president for...

<p>Reminds me of something Mike Murphy said about Trump in the aftermath of Jeb’s collapse. The logic in favor of nominating another Bush was always, er, complicated, but the logic against nominating a loose cannon is straightforward.</p> <p>I’ll bet even Murphy didn’t think Trump would advertise the possibility that America’s creditors might not receive payment in full in a Trump administration. Choose your own preferred term for what he’s recommending here — renegotiation, bankruptcy, default.</p>

One day after assuring Americans he is not running for president “to make things unstable for the country,” the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, said in a television interview Thursday that he might seek to reduce the national debt by persuading creditors to accept something less than full payment. Asked whether the United States needed to pay its debts in full, or whether he could negotiate a partial repayment, Mr. Trump told the cable network CNBC, “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” He added, “And if the economy was good, it...

Since this is an election year, you’re hearing a lot about the size of the national debt — and the financial imperative to expunge it before it gets passed on to our kids and grandkids. Donald Trump ... ...suggested earlier that it would be possible to pay off the entire national debt in about eight years... ...the only way to advance the debate is to get past the myths... #1) The federal government’s books are not like a family’s finances ...put yourself in the position of the government. Say you earn the typical American family income, and you spend and...

"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:457, Papers 15:398n "Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead...

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. Thomas Jefferson 1816 - letter to Samuel Kercheval There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and...

No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable. George Washington (Message to the House of Representatives, 3 December 1793) A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.” Alexander Hamilton “The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to...

Libertarian Solutions: How to solve the United States' $6,736,489,356,420 problem by Bill Winter LP News Editor If you had visited the online National Debt Clock at 12:00 noon on August 1, you would have seen this figure: $6,736,489,356,420.66. That's the amount of money owed by the federal government. (Over $6.7 trillion dollars.) But if you visited it again just 30 seconds later, you would have seen a different, bigger number: $6,736,489,954,145.59. That's an increase of about $590,000 -- a half-million dollars -- in 30 seconds. It's a stark reminder of just how quickly the politicians in Washington, DC are...

WOULD THOMAS JEFFERSON THINK WE ARE FREE? By Steven L. Hayes and Charles Adams What if Jefferson were to revisit America today? Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743. In his lifetime he saw his country transformed from an English colony to a country ruled by its own citizens. Remembered by many as the author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson also served as President and guided the young nation through eight turbulent years. When Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 at the age of 83, he left a country and a people whose commitment to the ideas of ...

Stan Druckenmiller ... when I look at the current picture of expected tax revenues combined with benefits promised to future generations, this is the most unsustainable situation I have seen ever in my career. The disaster that Druckenmiller sees coming for the United States is all about changing demographics and entitlement spending. They don’t add up to a sustainable situation. In 1940, entitlement payments, which include everything from disability payments to Social Security to Medicare, amounted to just over 20% of annual government spending in the United States. Today, entitlement spending has swelled to nearly 70% of the annual federal...

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) brushed off fears that a runaway national debt could pose a threat to America. "Look, a debt of whatever amount merely records resources that have already been acquired by the government," Markey argued. "The government has already gotten and spent that money for the benefit of America. Whether it ever pays this money back is basically irrelevant." "Let's imagine that, 'horror of horrors,' the government defaults on this debt," Markey continued. "Who's hurt? The people who lent the money to the government by buying bonds can obviously afford to lose this money. People who need their...

If you thought Obamacare was terrifying, just wait until you read about what President Obama's regulatory agencies are planning to do with your retirement savings. According to an alarming report in the Wall Street Journal, government regulators at the Labor Department will be implementing new rules at the end of the year that will eventually force private retirement investments into government accounts. How? By making private investment options, specifically IRAs, too burdensome, a liability and expensive. Bolding is mine.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday couldn't agree that federal debt is a national security problem, in a hearing aimed at assessing the long-term strategic implications of the government's $19 trillion debt. "A realistic discussion about it, and accepting expert opinion that this debt that we have is not actually right now a threat to our country, is I think a more realistic and honorable way of talking to the American people about it," Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday. That surprised committee chairman Bob Corker, who concluded the hearing by describing such views...

There is no magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, nor another bubble that would bring in enough revenue to offset the very large budget and reduce the unpayable national debt I have taught basic principles of economics for thirty years to group after group of college students who were often cross-eyed, bored, running late, playing with their phones, angry that I gave them too many notes, “hard tests,” and too many assignments which interfered with their busy social lives. Many students were there just to get a grade and to complete their useless social studies degrees...

President Obama’s first budget as president declared that he was ushering in a “new era of responsibility.” His last budget as president shows that he’s presided over an era of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility. That at least, is what the Congressional Budget Office’s independent analysis of Obama’s budget makes plain.

Janet Yellen signaled that the Fed is grappling with the problem I have been warning about: the dollar has become the de facto currency and the Fed is indeed becoming the world’s central bank. Yellen has admitted that everyone is lobbying the Fed to surrender its domestic policy objectives for international ones. This is precisely what took place in 1927. Yellen stated that the Fed should worry less about inflation domestically than about global growth risks. She pointed to the slowdown in China and depressed commodity prices, but Europe is a real basket case. She used the words that “caution...