You're a little confused. Any spending the US government does has to be approved in Congress, which is accountable. Raising the debt limit isn't removal of accountability, it's paying for things that Congress approved and is accountable for. And anything in the future that Congress approves, they will be accountable for. I agree. The other day I heard one, I think it was "We need solutions. Real solutions." How trite and generic, right? Like you, I wish people could move beyond such silly slogans.
That's a tough question because there are solutions. But if given a straight choice between keeping raising the debt ceiling and raising taxes to pay for that and defaulting, I'd take the default. I think we've come to that. To more or less continue down the same path we're on just makes matters worse.
Enough with the asinine sound bites. Also, I'd suggest you look up the word "accountable." To (kinda) quote a fine film, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
He offers an alternative: It isn’t too late to return to fiscal sanity. We could start by canceling out the debt held by the Federal Reserve, which would clear $1.6 trillion under the debt ceiling. Or we could cut trillions of dollars in spending by bringing our troops home from overseas, making gradual reforms to Social Security and Medicare, and bringing the federal government back within the limits envisioned by the Constitution. Yet no one is willing to step up to the plate and make the hard decisions that are necessary. Everyone wants to kick the can down the road and believe that deficit spending can continue unabated.
That is, at best, an accounting trick which accomplishes nothing other than avoiding a vote on the debt ceiling. Well, he's a congressman. If he can't convince his brethren to consider his plan, perhaps he's just not all that persuasive. Since what he wants to happen clearly isn't happening, maybe he should focus his efforts on finding a realistic solution. Y'know, doing the job we pay him to do. barfo
President Obama needs to stop the lie about Social Security payments. It's not only irresponsible, it's factually incorrect. http://www.advancingafreesociety.or...ident-social-security-checks-are-not-at-risk/
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/91224/ron-paul-debt-ceiling-federal-reserve Representative Ron Paul has hit upon a remarkably creative way to deal with the impasse over the debt ceiling: have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds it now holds. While at first blush this idea may seem crazy, on more careful thought it is actually a very reasonable way to deal with the crisis. Furthermore, it provides a way to have lasting savings to the budget. The basic story is that the Fed has bought roughly $1.6 trillion in government bonds through its various quantitative easing programs over the last two and a half years. This money is part of the $14.3 trillion debt that is subject to the debt ceiling. However, the Fed is an agency of the government. Its assets are in fact assets of the government. Each year, the Fed refunds the interest earned on its assets in excess of the money needed to cover its operating expenses. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. In this sense, the bonds held by the Fed are literally money that the government owes to itself. Unlike the debt held by Social Security, the debt held by the Fed is not tied to any specific obligations. The bonds held by the Fed are assets of the Fed. It has no obligations that it must use these assets to meet. There is no one who loses their retirement income if the Fed doesn’t have its bonds. In fact, there is no direct loss of income to anyone associated with the Fed’s destruction of its bonds. This means that if Congress told the Fed to burn the bonds, it would in effect just be destroying a liability that the government had to itself, but it would still reduce the debt subject to the debt ceiling by $1.6 trillion. This would buy the country considerable breathing room before the debt ceiling had to be raised again. President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership could have close to two years to talk about potential spending cuts or tax increases. Maybe they could even talk a little about jobs. In addition, there’s a second reason why Representative Paul’s plan is such a good idea. As it stands now, the Fed plans to sell off its bond holdings over the next few years. This means that the interest paid on these bonds would go to banks, corporations, pension funds, and individual investors who purchase them from the Fed. In this case, the interest payments would be a burden to the Treasury since the Fed would no longer be collecting (and refunding) the interest.
Denny, do you mean to say that we have worthless government bonds (as we have nothing to back them with) printed and purchased by the feds and the feds give back a portion of the interest? Seems like a shell game to me.
The Treasurer of the U.S. lacks legal authority to print new currency, so a trillion-dollar bill is out of the question. But he has legal authority to stamp as many coins as he wishes, since Congress figured that was pennies on the dollar. The Treasurer should simply manufacture several coins in the amount of $1 trillion dollars each. He can store them in Fort Knox. This will increase the money supply and back up America's credit. If he does this, of course, Republicans will immediately demand tax cuts for the rich, as they did when Bush inherited Clinton's annual surplus. As Republicans said then, what good is a surplus if you're just using it to pay down the debt?
A summary of Karl Rove's latest article, in which he details 2012 campaign strategy, keyed upon causing an economic emergency between now and then. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/18/117704/commentary-keeping-some-voters.html
The fact that 25% of the people answering the survey have been convinced that defaulting is a good thing is absolutely mind boggling. The money that think you are saving on taxes (even though no one on here is in a bracket that would raise anyway) will actually be worth *less* when the dollar drops. Oh well... if that makes sense to you I hope all your savings are in gold.
We're securitizing the debt on a pool of properties and was on a conference call about it this morning with Fitch. After we discussed our properties, of course we had a number of questions about their view of what was going on in Washington. Their point of view was interesting. The risk to our credit rating isn't whether or not Ds and Rs agree on a debt limit increase, but rather we'll get serious about tackling our debt. Their position is if we miss this opportunity to change the trajectory of what they view as unsustainable spending, then we'll get downgraded. They've been talking with our largest holders of Treasuries. The T-bill holders have sent the message in the market that if we're late on a payment or miss a payment or two, it won't be a big deal as long as a deal to alter spending is reached. If we don't do anything about spending and just issue $2.4T more in debt, it WILL be a big deal. as the result of that path will be to devalue the notes they hold. NO ONE in the markets are worried about default. They know we'll pay our current debt obligations. They're worried about the larger picture. And that's the view of both bond investors and ratings agencies. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.
There is no option in the poll to not raise the debt limit and not default. The idea here is to pay the $20B in debt obligations from the $200B in revenues, then prioritize what the remaining $180B gets spent on. Those are monthly amounts, fwiw. The $20B in IOU payments is the only kind of default that matters.
It seems Harry Reid has seen the light. He's going to get bipartisan support for $2.7T in cuts in exchange for a bump in the borrowing limit long enough to last past the 2012 elections. Why the elections matter is the dems don't want to be on the wrong side of this issue again when voters will vote them out.
In response to maxiep, one of the former CBO directors was on C-SPAN over the weekend. He said that if we took the president's rosiest scenario from his budget proposal, the deficits would never go below $1.2T. Trajectory, indeed. It's no given that the president's projections will come close to matching reality, they haven't so far.
The House GOP should pass that and force Reid to help the GOP pass it in the Senate... then let Obama either sign it or try to explain a veto away as something other than pure politics... Ed O.
