Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but where I come from a “ceiling” that reaches all the way to the sky is not a “ceiling”; it’s just the sky.
I might take the term “ceiling” seriously if they refrained from raising it at least once. That doesn’t seem likely to happen.
Thanks for posting this article
The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain on one side and the United States of America and its allies on the other.
17.83 Trillion dollars. What a great Patriotic number to make the limit of our Total National Debt that we will agree to pay back, with interest.
When we know, with certainty, our limit of Total Debt, we can then chose either the 10 or 15 % Reduction in TOTAL Federal spending on a year to year basis to get our National Debt back to the pre-TARP National Debt Level.
America will then returned to the Civilized World !
Great post. I had some of this data, but this is the whole story. Forget the lefties scare tactics and the Black Swan fairy tale. This is real not a fairy tale.
“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”
The federales are bankrupt.
No amount of juggling the numbers around will change that.