[Glenn]

Debt is good. Debt is good. Debt is good.

Get with the program.

[REDWOOD99]

Point, please.

[Mayhem]

Powerball rolled over again?

[new cruelty]

No problem. I'll just put it on our capital one prime lock card...

[glock rocks]

[nanak]

"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23

"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40

[skip_intro]

Don't worry about it. We can finance it by selling weapons systems to China.

[nanak]

"It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie, is a good or an evil... I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:409

[Americanwolf]

The sky is falling.... The sky is falling! Oh wait that was chicken little....

Really come on now Debt is a good thing especially during a war. The balanced budget under the democrats was smoke and mirrors.

[RabidBartender]

Beltran signed with the Yankees then?

[SERKIT]

Bunny, pancake - you get the message. And the point is....?

[lowbridge]

This problem is solved easily. Just hold a few bake sales and donate the profits to the government.

[Arkinsaw]

The fallout from people flying planes into your skyscrapers can do that.

When an administration allows the biggest economic bubble in history to just grow and grow and grow until it pops, that sort of thing can happen to you.

Going to war in two countries to eliminate the people who flew planes into your skyscrapers can do that.

Having to go from a lassez-faire attitude about security to one of eternal vigilance in just a year or two can do that to you.

Just remember, Hillary and her healthcare plan are standing by to make this look like chump change.

[MissAmericanPie]

When govenrment says it has balanced the budget, it means that we have been able to pay the interest on the national debt. We never pay the principle, only the interest.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I'll chip in with the $0.27.

[CaptainAwesome2]

how about we take iraqs oil and stop wasting money trying to rebuild their nation.

[Huck]

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796.

[monkeyshine]

$7,524,963,287,269.27
______________________

Shucks I knew I left my ATM receipt in the machine. I sure wish you hadn't posted anything about it.

[lowbridge]

When's the ZOT coming?

[cripplecreek]

Oh great, as if I didn't have enough bills already.