There is no way we can balance the budget by September. The draconian cuts you propose would never pass Congress. The budget deficit should be reduced on a long term glide path. We raise our debt ceiling to avoid default. There is nothing magic about $14 Trillion in publicly held debt. FYI: We must raise the total debt ceiling--not just the publicly held debt. Intragovernmental holdings [SS,Medicare, and other trust funds] are included in the current $14 trillion national debt.
I'm sure you have the best of intentions but our debt and deficits are simply a matter of arithmetic. One doesn't have to put on a tin foil hat to look at it, just green eye shades. Once it is seen, it is simply a matter of will to deal with it.
That is exactly my point. The idea that we can have entitlement reform in three months is a non-starter. Nor can you make the huge cuts in government operations that you propose. You not only have to deal with arithmetic, you must address the political landscape.
First you’re getting the numbers wrong.
Our total debt is $14T. Our publicly held debt is $9T. The difference, $5T, is intra-governmental held debt and, as you correctly say, not important because we won’t pay our own debt. (As an economic aside, note that the people who charged the debt, our grandparents, can’t pay it to the people who need it, our parents. That’s a thinker.)
There IS something magical about the (publicly held) debt to GDP ratio. Bond holders typically refuse to lend when it gets around 100%. We don’t know when our bond holders will refuse to lend but the past is prologue. It will depend on the confidence they have in our ability to pay at that time. They will have no confidence when interest rates rise to the point that new debt cannot be paid without defaulting on old debt.
Our current debt to GDP ratio is $9T/$14T x 100% = 64%. Under Obama’s $1.4T annual deficit plan, we will add 10% per year, leaving us three years to default. Under the Republican’s $1.1T plan, we will add 8% per year, leaving us five years to default. This time to failure calculation assumes that our current historically low interest rates stay historically low. They won’t and and must go up exponentially, the closer we get to 100%.
Personally what I have learned in my life is to get from denial to acceptance as quickly as I can. Bargaining is the hardest step. To get past it, I do what I can do to be as certain as I need to be that there is a problem that needs to be solved. Then it’s just a matter of character.
As for politicians accepting this problem, Patrick Henry saw this situation coming. At the time the states were being asked to consolidate under one government to pay off the debts from the Revolutionary war. Patrick Henry looked at the proposed constitution, saw a fundamental problem with it and said,
“I say they may ruin you; for where, sir, is the responsibility? The yeas and nays will show you nothing, unless they be fools as well as knaves; for, after having wickedly trampled on the rights of the people, they would act like fools indeed, were they to publish and divulge their iniquity, when they have it equally in their power to suppress and conceal it.
Where is the responsibility—that leading principle in the British government? In that government, a punishment certain and inevitable is provided; but in this, there is no real, actual punishment for the grossest mal-administration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities.”
He was right, they are knaves but not fools. They will obscure the truth as much as they can. Why do you think they spend so much time pointing fingers at each other? The only reason they get away with that is because voters have forgotten that in our system of government, only the House is responsible for what the House allows. The House Republicans will have only the House Republicans to blame if/when we default.