The U.S. Treasury has been using emergency measures to avoid breaching the federal borrowing limit since March. Posted on 07/14/2015 3:57:37 AM PDT by expat_panama
The U.S. Treasury has been using emergency measures to avoid breaching the federal borrowing limit since March.
Is it time to ditch the debt ceiling?
The Government Accountability Office raises that question in a new report that both quantifies the damage caused by past episodes of debt-ceiling brinksmanship and offers Congress with possible ways out.
The report is particularly relevant right now because the U.S. Treasur
y has been using emergency measures to avoid breaching the federal borrowing limit since March. Budget analysts estimate that it can use those measures, such as halting certain pension investments, until it is unable to borrow money sometime in November or December.
Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t approve more spending by the government. Instead, it allows the government to borrow to pay debts it has already incurred....
{snip}
The GAO puts forward three options to replace the debt limit:
• Congress could instead agree to raise the debt limit as part of the annual process of passing a joint budget resolution. This would force Congress to agree to pay the bills when it decides to spend money on things, limiting the potential for market disruptions.
• Congress could provide the executive branch with the authority to raise the debt limit on its own while reserving the power to stop the increase by passing a joint resolution.
• Congress could do away with the debt limit altogether, giving the executive branch broader power to borrow in order to pay for spending already approved by the Congress. This would mirror the arrangement used in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
We’re at the points where we’re only opening mail that doesn’t have “Past Due” stamped on it.
When we go buy something like entitlements, more money for this giveaway, that giveaway, we’re essentially rifling through out wallet to find a credit card that still has something left of the ceiling.
Let the good times roll! Stock indexes lept back up to (S&P500) or above (NASDAQ0 their 50-day moving averages gaining over a percent in mixed trade. Metals fudged ok, and futures today foresee stock fudging (-0.5%) and further profit taking w/ metals (-0.52%). Reports this AM:
Retail Sales
Retail Sales ex-auto
Export Prices ex-ag.
Import Prices ex-oil
Business Inventories
Government Accountability Office wants to abolish accountability.
We have a federal debt limit?
Who knew?
Seriously, though, how about establishing a balanced budget requirement?
I prefer the periodic kabuki theater over raising the limit.
Who knew?
I notice that the chart mentions that the Treasury has used “extraordinary measures” to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.
Too bad no one thinks of the one obvious measure that households must use to avoid their “debt ceilings”—cut spending. That particular common-sense measure is not mentioned anywhere.
Allowing money creation through idiots voting, with debt as the principal monetary instrument, cannot work in the long run.
As Keynes famously observed, “in the long run, we’re all dead”. But as a man with no interest in women and therefore no children, he could be indifferent to “the long run”.
The US Constitution, OTOH, was written to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity. That’s why no State may make any thing except gold and silver coin legal tender.
Our debt-as-money system is now over the edge. More debt is necessary to service the debt. It is debt service that keeps the system afloat. In effect, your labor and the associated tax withholding have become monetized.
Of course the “debt limit” should be eliminated. It will hasten the end of this non-viable system and allow something old to emerge.
“Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t approve more spending by the government. Instead, it allows the government to borrow to pay debts it has already incurred....”
Translation: we’re at the point of paying the MasterCard with the Visa, and are begging Visa to raise the borrowing limit.
Living a financial joke is a bad sign.
“Should Congress Abolish the Federal Debt Limit?”
Why not? It’s not like Republicans and Democrats have a fundamental difference in philosophy when it comes to spending. It’s not like GOP leadership in Congress have the ability to take a principled stand over something.
We have no debt limit, in practical reality, so why not do away with the charade?
There are no limits to government until the American people impose it themselves.
The law would also have to change to eliminate all the social programs as mandatory spending, which currently consumes 60% of the 2015 budget. In 2011, it was 55%.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/BS_Mandatory_print.pdf
YOU DID BUILD THIS CONgre$$
A long time ago, in a country far, far away people spoke about this...
Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit 9–18 February 1790
James Jackson (Ga.)
But it is doubted with me whether a permanent funded debt is beneficial or not to any country.
The same effect must be produced that has taken place in other nations; it must either bring on a national bankruptcy or annihilate her existence as an independent empire. Hence I contend, sir, that a funding system, in this country, will be highly dangerous to the welfare of the republic; it may, for a moment, raise our credit and increase the circulation, by multiplying a new species of currency; but it must, in times afterward, settle upon our posterity a burthen which they can neither bear nor relieve themselves from. It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the sovereign authority until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring, or is inevitably bringing, upon all the nations of the earth who have had the temerity to make the experiment.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/875
6. But the grand nostrum will be a public debt...
8. (4) A great debt will require great taxes; great taxes, many taxgatherers and other officers; and all officers are auxiliaries of power.
11. As soon as sufficient progress in the intended change shall have been made, and the public mind duly prepared according to the rules already laid down, it will be proper to venture on another and a bolder step toward a removal of the constitutional landmarks.
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/freneau/republic2monarchy.htm
/debt slavery
Why not? They never fail to increase it when they hit the old one anyway.
Would you give a billion dollar credit limit on a credit card to a 10 year old in the Mall of America?
I believe obama’s protectors pulled the plug on the debt meter about 2 months ago, so America is already in no man’s land
Hey boehner what time is happy hour tonight?
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