I Barely Care Enough To Write This

So, a small part of the Federal Government is shut down, for how long I really do not care. Most of the EPA is shut down, so that is nice. Some parks I rarely visit are closed, but the ones I do visit normally close after Labor Day, so I would like to care, but I don't. Maybe the Obama Administration will close the ski slopes I use (they lease their land from the Forest Service), but nothing so drastic yet. Things are about the same, really, so the motivation to write a Shout Bits article is slight at best.

I do not care that a bunch of people in Washington who meddle in things they should not are unemployed. I do not care if Washington landlords might not get their rent checks on time. I do not care if restaurants and grocery stores have to check the quality of their own produce – I trust Costco to do a good job on its own. With each passing day, it becomes obvious to me that a partial government shutdown is not a crisis.

The Old Media presented the shutdown as a horror show worse than anyone could imagine, but nothing has happened on this home front. NPR dredges a daily story about some obscure group that is harmed by the shutdown, but their stories only drive home the fact that the average life is unchanged.

The sequester and the shutdown really amounted to nothing huge; I could easily live with both indefinitely. The next horror will be the debt ceiling, but I am having a hard time generating outrage and concern. If two much-hyped disasters turned out to be nothing, then the debt ceiling Armageddon is probably over-sold as well. Indeed the debt ceiling might be instructive as were the sequester and shutdown.

The US Treasury can still service its debt with tax revenues. Interest last year was $416 billion, while revenues were $2.7 trillion. There is no danger of default unless the Obama Administration wants it for political leverage. The Fed prints something like $68 billion in new money per month, which is close to the $973 billion annual deficit. Indeed, the shutdown plus the Fed's money printing could close the gap nicely.

The Federal Government's most popular programs are Social Security, Medicare, and the military. If these programs were fully continued plus interest on the debt, they would consume about all the Federal revenues, leaving nothing for courts and roads. However, these programs do contain discretionary spending, and could easily be reformed. Social Security disability fraud alone is easily $100 billion per year.

The debt ceiling might be worse than the non-events of the sequester and the shutdown, but it hardly looks unmanageable. The only way taxpayers were able to find out that the government does so very little to help them was to allow the first two manufactured disasters to happen. Maybe a few days against the debt ceiling will do something similar.

Either way, unless someone slipped a Klonopin in my breakfast, I see no reason for much concern. The Federal Government has grown far beyond its Constitutional purpose, and Washington is the home of corruption and self-service. The lives of politicians and bureaucrat hacks are so far removed from mine that their collapse rates a yawn.

The reality of a real debt limit:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3076090/posts?page=1

The Debt Ceiling is the Law of the Land
redstate.com ^ | 10/6/13 | Daniel Horowitz
Posted on Monday, October 07, 2013 6:07:28 PM by cotton1706

Over the past few weeks, Democrats have indicated that they have no intention of negotiating over Obamacare, opting instead to shut down the government. They are justifying their obstinacy by asserting that Obamacare is the law of the land. Well, if that is the game they want to play, we should return the favor with the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling, pursuant to the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, is the law of the land. And it has been so for far longer than Obamacare.

Throughout this debate over funding Obamacare in the budget bill, House GOP leaders have stressed how the debt ceiling was the more appropriate means of fighting Obamacare. After all, it was “the next fight.” But as if on cue, some Republicans are already using the same Democrat talking points about the risk of default.

We are going to hear this erroneous talking point propagated by both parties over the next few weeks, so let’s put the myth to rest. The only way we default on the debt is if we fail to pay the interest on the public debt. According to the updated budget projection from the CBO, interest on the debt will be roughly $237 billion for 2014. Thanks to the short-term revenue benefits of the fiscal cliff and Obamacare tax hikes, the federal government is expected to rake in a record $3.042 trillion from the private economy this year.

Let’s engage in a simple math exercise. $3.042 trillion – $237 billion = $2.805 trillion. As long as the Treasury pays the first $237 billion in revenue to the shareholders of our debt, there will be no default, and we will have $2.805 trillion left to spend. Again, default is taken off the table. Discussion over.

What do you do with the remaining funds? You start funding core functions of government and those programs that people are already dependent on.

Social Security (retirement and disability) – $848 billion
Medicare – $505 billion
Medicaid – $298 billion
Defense – $582 billion
Veterans – $83 billion

Those expenditures account for roughly $2.3 trillion. The remaining half trillion can be prioritized as needed for other functions related to homeland security, national parks, or any other limited function.

Hence, the debt ceiling is a built-in balanced budget mechanism. If Democrats want to fund other functions of government, they need to commit to a balanced budget. If they want to fund the HHS and the IRS, they need to get rid of Obamacare. If they want to fund the EPA, they need to get rid of the war on coal.

The power of the purse manifest in the House of Representatives, in conjunction with the debt ceiling law, reflects democracy at work, especially with divided government. It’s time we stop peddling the myth of default, and start using our leverage to restore constitutional government and bring relief to those who are losing jobs and suffering from the high cost of living engendered by the harmful activities of the unconstitutional aspects of government.

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