Posted on 04/03/2016 2:28:33 PM PDT by drewh
As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said.
"The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else," Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. "We can get rid of government buildings we're not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold."
In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Trump said he would get rid of the $19 trillion national debt "over a period of eight years." The article noted that most economists would consider Trump's proposal impossible, as it could require slashing the annual federal budget by more than half.
However, when pressed on whether the United States could sell off $16 trillion worth of assets, Bennett responded affirmatively on Sunday.
"Oh, my goodness," he said. "Do you know how much land we have? You know how much oil is off shore? And in government lands? Easily."
The federal government's assets totaled $3.2 trillion as of September 2015, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. However, that does not include include stewardship assets or natural resources.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Bye bye National parks, hello China.
Let's make a deal
We the US can get the oil out of ANWR.
We just need a government that will enable us to do the drilling.
OR are you just trying to be funny with your comment? Did not see the sarc tag
Yes you are right and we need to fix it.
But you can not sell the chicken that lays the egg and expect the baker to make the cake that needs the egg.
The solution is to stop the spending and bleeding. Sure shutdown the alphabet departments and the multiple parallel departments that soak us like a sponge.
Then sell off their assets.
But selling our land off is another deal. This must be handled very carefully.
Because spending too mich isn’t how we got here?
Yeah, someone here is ignorant... But you might want to check a mirror.
It’s a personality quirk.
Some folks find things like facts and reality objectionable when it rubs against their fanboy/fangirl drooling mindlessness...
Of course others have a plan. The outlines are well known. We can plow through the government eliminating this and that, but this won't get us very far. The truth is that a handful of big programs drive the budget. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, other entitlements, national defense, and debt service clock in at around 90 percent of federal spending. "General government" is around ten percent and is, along with defense, the declining portion.
We either face up to restraining entitlements, or we wave the white flag. Everyone who has looked at the numbers understands this. Trump, of course, is again talking through his hat and is promising a quick and easy quick fix. Pure boob bait, but he understands his audience.
The only way to (first) balance the budget and (second) begin to pay down the debt is to reduce the rate of growth of federal spending to less than the rate of growth of the economy, and keep it there. It of course helps if we institute policies that grow the economy, as opposed to the systematic sabotage of the Obama era. To restrain entitlements, we need to move Social Security to a fully funded basis, preferably with individually owned, inheritable personal accounts. This will cost money in the short term as we will have to amortize the unfunded liability of the legacy system, but it will pay off in the long run. And on health care we need to repeal Obamacare and move the system to a market oriented model. There are 101 things to do with the other entitlements as well, but health care and Social Security are the dominant issues. Either we fix them, or they will bankrupt us.
It is not true that "no one else has a plan." We know perfectly well what we have to do. And you should note that various Republicans over the last 30 years have made repeated attempts to do these things. The problem is not that no one has a plan. The problem is that we have not had the votes to execute the plan. And now comes Trump, who has attacked other Republicans for talking about entitlement reform and says he can do the job with magic unicorns.
A very good plan if sales are restricted only to American Patriot citizens. Selling the land has been discussed for decades and to be clear, the politicians say it belongs to “we the people” which is utter BS. WeThe People own nothing. We pay rent annually to the government in taxes for all our property.
Selling government real estate has been discussed many times on FR.
I like his idea of selling off government lands, if he seriously means it.
I understand what you’re saying. We’ve started down the road to having a king. Now we want to go farther only with the guy WE want to be king...? I’m not there. I’d rather have a return to the constitution and eliminate most of the agencies.
Actually, it does. Part of the budgetary expenses each year goes towards retiring bonds that become due that year. If those bonds are indeed retired and not renewed, then the overall debt goes down. Do this thirty years in a row, and there is no more debt.
The Dewhurst folks kept asking the same thing.
Agreed.
Detroit was going to do the same thing with their art museum.
It’s what normal Americans do when they are in debt - sell assets.
This would be a great first step in crushing DC centralized power.
Why is that impossible? It sounds like music to my ears! We'd get by just fine on half the current budget.
When China and the Saudis buy property in the US, they are invested in our future. And they would not be alone. And their ownership would be according to our laws and regs.
Same happened with Japan. People were scared when they bought so much real estate here. But Japan became a stronger ally best I can tell.
‘... so long as the lands are not sold to a foreign power ...’
Still under our power, subjected to our laws. And with a muslim ban on top? Extra-cool.
I’m still a Cruz girl but admit that this is the first thing out of Trump’s mouth that piqued my interest. I am still hopeful for a Trump/Cruz ticket. Yes, I realize that is most likely not going to happen. Sure would make it easier for me to vote for Trump.
Let’s think about this for a minute. What land does the Federal Government truly own? I’ll concede Federal Buildings, and the land beneath military bases; but that’s it. Otherwise the land truly belongs to the States...and not the Federal Government.
While I’ll give Trump an A+ for thinking outside the box, I’m not a fan of the Feds thinking they “own” anything, because they should actually own very little.
The first solution needs to be analyzing the role of the Federal Government and getting rid of all the unnecessary crap (departments, office of this, secretaries to secretaries, government programs, etc).
Wherever possible, move things back to the States.
Imagine what that would do to interest rates of future bonds.
We could sell the good old 30 year bond again with low, low interest rates.
Each phase of sales would improve our nation’s real credit rating. In the end, we would have a huge rating and little or no debt.
"Do you know how much land we have? You know how much oil is off shore? And in government lands? Easily." The federal government's assets totaled $3.2 trillion as of September 2015, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. However, that does not include include stewardship assets or natural resources.Accountability Office, yeah, okay.
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