This past Friday Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress to increase the debt limit, which is currently $12.1 trillion. In a letter sent to Congress Geithner asks for the increase but did not specific the amount. Just ask for a blank check Tim.
In the same rhetoric used by his boss, Geithner said in the letter, “It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations.”
This is the same rhetoric they use when they want to raise taxes for education. The say something like, “We must spend $100 trillion per child per week in order to match the education of other countries. If we fail to do this, we fail our children. They may grow up to become conservatives” BS is BS. Even sugar coating it does not change it but liberals like the taste anyway.
He wrote “Congress has never failed to raise the debt limit when necessary. Because members of both parties have long recognized the need to keep politics away from this issue, these actions have traditionally received bipartisan support.” “This is clearly a moment in our history that calls for continuation of that tradition.” (See the BS statement above.)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
While it is true the debt limit has been raised in the past, now is not the time to do this. Given the current debacle of the healthcare fight, Obama’s stimulus and bailouts of banks, and automakers, cash for perfectly good vehicles we hate program, the anger by we the people towards Congress and Obamanomics, this will be another out of control spending spree for Obama. He is creating a mess that will take decades to clean up.
The Treasury Department is saying the debt limit will be hit in the October December quarter of this year. It was raised last February as the $787 billion Obama-Stimulus package was given to us unwillingly.
The Congressional Budget Office has said the federal government’s budget deficit to reach $1.3 trillion through the first ten months of fiscal 2009, right on track to reach a record high of $1.8 trillion for the 12-month period.
Don’t believe any reasons given for this increase request. Because of the never before levels of spending by the Obama House, tax revenues have fallen to a record below that of 1932.
This is all a set up for the largest tax increase in American History coming to a paycheck near you soon. Instead of tax cuts that would give real stimulus to our economy, create real jobs, provide real growth in business and let consumers spend or save money, they are only destroying our free market and way of life.
Geithner asking Congress to increase the debt limit is like a spoiled kid blowing their allowance foolishly and then demanding more. Obama is that spoiled kid and we as the parents need to take Barry to the woodshed.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
This man is an idiot we need to not print more more money,raise taxes,or add more money to our deficit. We need to cut spending and we need a balanced budget amendment to fix America, because our deficits are ridiculous and that’s the simplest way to put it. We need to eliminate the deficit by making it so it’s illegal for Congress to pass a budget that has a deficit. The government has to tell people we can either get rid of big government spending or you can pay higher taxes. Now if I may speak for the people nobody will pick higher taxes.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Actually george if you were objective and honest about it, this whole mess was started back in the clinton years and increased dramatically during the bush years before it fell on our collective head. Obama is just trying to clean it up and its going to cost big money. You could say this mess is s direct result of our culture on overdrive and irresponsible successive managements. To demonize obama for our failure as a culture is a totally weak analysis.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Brian:
You obviously don’t understand what he’s trying to do and that’s expand government and increase regulation. Now I’ll put it simple as this if he really wants to fix our economy he would drill for oil and natural gas, because anyone who has a brain could pick it up that drilling will fix our economy in ten seconds flat.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
bush didn’t have his administration regulate the financial industry for example. by putting chris cox in charge of the sec and he then in turn dropped the shorting uptick rule, it became possible for anybody to simply short shares endlessly they didn’t even own thus driving down the stock market costing so many people their retirement moneys and pensions. If bush had done his required regulatory function of the financial markets much of the melt down could have been prevented. but he didn’t. he was an ideologue, or an ideology that let one group of americans profit hugely at everyone else’s expense here and overseas.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Brian,
President Bush did try to regulate the money lending institutions. It was blocked by the democrats in congress. It was President Bush’s policies that sank the stock market. It was President Bush’s policies that raised the market from 7000 to 14,000 between 2002 and 2007. This was caused by a housing bubble, similar to the tech bubble in the 1990’s. Bubble’s that are not under control will only pop. When they do, the air goes out of the market. It happened for President Clinton and President Bush and it, more than likely, will happen under President Obama.
Frank
August 9th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
The following will be difficult to read given the presentation. An HTML table is available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
Year Gross Debt in Billions as % of GDP
1910 2.6 n/a
1920 25.9 n/a
1930 16.2 n/a
1940 43.0 52.4
1950 257.4 94.1
1960 290.5 56.1
1970 380.9 37.6
1980 909.0 33.3
1990 3,206.3 55.9
2000 5,628.7 58.0
2001 5,769.9 57.4
2002 6,198.4 59.7
2003 6,760.0 62.5
2004 7,354.7 64.0
2005 7,905.3 64.6
2006 8,451.4 64.9
2007 8,950.7 65.5
2008 9,985.8 70.2
2009 (est.) 12,867.5 90.4
2010 (est.) 14,456.3 98.1
2011 (est.) 15,673.9 101.1
2012 (est.) 16,565.7 100.6
2013 (est.) 17,440.2 99.7
2014 (est.) 18,350.0 99.9
Unfortunately, the above doesn’t even account for all the debt — it’s just what Congress want’s to recognize. It’s funny money accounting that’s illegal in the private sector.
The federal government is managed by “people” who’ve “discovered” that you get elected by spending other people’s money. It’s not really difficult to see where this is headed.
August 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Before someone like Brian says it, Barry H. Obama is not doing anything to clean up this miss or any other mess. If he were he would stop printing, spending and wasting money. But because he is a bumling boob that has never done anything but spend other peoples money, is a class envy peddler, a socialist, an enept no experienced leader and a plain liar. He has no idea how to do anything but give written speeches that are as blank and as void of actual ideas as he is.
August 9th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
are you projecting?
August 9th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Brian.
If he werte really trying to fix this mess like any simple minded housewife in charge of finances he’s start looking for ways to save money and programs that cant be abandoned, entitlements to be curbed.
I’m sorry, but in the last 7 months I’ve not seen any common sense action like this take place. Its been talked about simply for expedient purposes but never followed through on.
Charles is right on some account as Obama is too in bed with greeb efforts to take the most fesable methos there is and that is to increase the employment factor in fossil fuels and use those fuels to aleviate the financial stress in the gen. population and our commerce.
Imagine if shipping cost were brought down for consumers and day to day to and from work saved everyone 5 bucks a day. Thats a 150 bucks a month to go back into the system times millions every month even without the savings in consumer products. You right away have more consumer confidence when they see prices at the store dropping and they have the funds due to gas being cheaper to be able to act on that confidence.
Drilling would just be one of many similar actions taken that could do much more than simply extending your line of credit as Geithner wants
But no, sh*t head just wants to corner everyone so as to garner more votes in 2012.
Wise up.
August 9th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
“Charles is right on some account as Obama is too in bed with greeb efforts”
well, it could of said “greed efforts” and still of been correct but I meant to say “green
August 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
have you guys even considered EVEN CONSIDERED that the US is in a post-industrial Capitalistic phase and that is one FUNDAMENTAL reason why our economic system is imploding? In other words, its no one presidents fault completely, but a natural stage in this cycle of evolution? Its a shift of resources to those who run the capital as there really isn’t much a need for a big middle class anymore. We can offshore our manufacturing, import cheap immigrants for the general labor duties and just manage money and services here domestically and make big profits FOR A FEW. It also destroys the unions thus lowering wages and increasing PROFITS
August 9th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
frank I wouldn’t call bush’s putting cox in charge of the sec an effort in regulating the financial industries. Just look what he did. come on.
August 9th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I don’t think greenspan helped by dropping interest rates so often to feed the big bubbles forming either. And it wasn’t a strong dollar policy either. So how did that help us? It only enriched the financial service industrys and some quick footed stock and bond traders.
August 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Micky:
Well like what I said to some girl in a strip club last night and I also said this to Congress.
Drill baby Drill
No with all seriousness if we were to get energy independence from oil and natural with the help of Nuclear power we would be on the road economic recovery. And the most important thing about this is that we wouldn’t have to spend a trillion dollars plus healthcare reform to fix the economy. I mean your a hundred percent correct about what you said, because if 5 dollars a day saved is saved that’s over $1,500 a year saved which is twice what the stimulus gave. And by the way this whole Global Warming thing to me was created to give Al Gore a paycheck, because I’ve said it before he went from 2 to one hundred million dollars in eight years. And if crap and trade gets passed through the Senate Gore becomes one of the wealthiest men in the world.
August 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Also I would like to mention lets just say one hundred million people save 5 dollars a day then we’ll have over 150 billions dollars saved every year which is pumped back into the economy.
August 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
George,
Why don’t you be honest about the debt. The truth is that the debt did not just appear, it has been around for quite a while. Lets take a look at the historical figures for the National Debt. We will start with the debt as it stood near the end of WWII.
In July of 1945, the debt stood at $258.68 Billion. For practical purposes, we can call this the start of the Truman Administration. At that point, the National Debt was about 110% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of this country. In July of 1952, the National Debt was about $259.1 Billion, only a very modest increase from the debt in 1945. When Truman was relieved by Eisenhower, the National Debt was about 72% of the GDP.
The July before Kennedy relieved Eisenhower, the debt had increased moderately to $286.3 Billion. It stood at about 55% of the GDP. We will consider the Johnson administration as a continuation of the Kennedy administration, so the next break point will be July 1968, just prior to Johnson being relieved by Nixon. At that time the National Debt was $347.5 Billion and it was about 40% of the GDP of this country.
Just as the Johnson administration was a continuation of the Kennedy administration, we can look on the Ford administration as the continuation of the Nixon administration. In July of 1976, the National Debt stood at $620.4 Billion and was at about 36% of the GDP.
The late 1970’s were pretty bad for this country economically. Things got so bad that the government pushed back the beginning of its fiscal year from the first day of July to the first day of October. This was done to give the government more time to get the budgets passed each year. In October of 1980, the National Debt stood at $907.7 Billion, and was about 34% of the GDP when Reagan relieved Carter in 1981.
Are you seeing a pattern in this?
The National Debt, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product of this country had decreased in every administration from Truman to Carter. That encompassed thirty-six years and seven different Presidents.
Then came the Gipper. Now Ronald Reagan was an excellent President. When he left office in 1988, he had only one real regret about his eight years as President. That regret was the amount that the National Debt had risen during his two terms in office. In October 1988 the National Debt had risen to $2,602,337,712,041. That debt had multiplied 2.866 times during his time in office, and had reached the One Trillion Dollar mark for the first time in our history. When Bush Sr. relieved Reagan, the National Debt had climbed back up to about 51% of the GDP.
Bush Sr. was also a good President, but his single term saw the debt increase to $4,064,620,655,521 by October of 1992, a factor of 1.56 to 1. When Clinton relieved Bush Sr. in January of 1993, the National Debt was about 64% of the GDP.
On the day after Dubya relieved Clinton in 2001, the National Debt had risen to $5,728.1 Billion, and stood at a level of 57% of the GDP.
On January 20, 2009, Obama relieved Dubya. The National Debt stood at $10,626.8 Billion on that day and was about 75% of the GDP.
The figures that I used for the National Debt can be found at the following links:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
and
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
A chart showing the debt as a percentage of GDP can be found here:
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/National-Debt-GDP.gif
You will note that during the past 64 years, the ratio of the National Debt to the GDP has gone down during the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Clinton. On the other hand, the ratio of the National Debt to the GDP has gone up during the administrations of Reagan, Bush Sr. and Dubya.
Obama has been in office for less than eight months, and his administration inherited an economic downturn that rivals any that this country has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. You seem to ignore all of that in your blog. Instead, you just concentrate on the fact that the debt is going up under the Obama administration.
Well, The National Debt as of Thursday August 6, 2009 was $11,660.1 Billion, which means that in the 198 days since Obama took office the National Debt has increased by $1,033.3 Billion. That is alarming!!!
But lets go back a step. If you go back 197 days before Obama relieved Dubya, the National Debt stood at $9,493.5 Billion on July 7, 2008. That means that the National Debt increased by $1,133.3 Billion during the last 197 days of the Dubya administration.
It only increased by $1,033.3 Billion during the first 198 days of the Obama Aministration, so Obama is doing better as a rookie President than Dubya did as an eight year veteran.
Tell me about the rabbits again George!!!!
I say that, because in your blog, all you seen to want to do is castigate the Obama Administration. You even went so far as to say that the Obama administration has said something like “We must spend $100 trillion per child per week in order to match the education of other countries. If we fail to do this, we fail our children. They may grow up to become conservatives”. You then went on to say “BS is BS. Even sugar coating it does not change it but liberals like the taste anyway”
Well, you are right about one thing. BS is BS and your opening blog on this thread is a perfect example of BS. I don’t like BS whether it comes from a liberal or a conservative or a centrist.
I will go further….I am not a liberal. I voted for Barry Goldwater twice and Nixon once. I stood ‘Nuclear Deterrence’ watches while I was in the Navy, and I was ready an willing to ‘pull the trigger’ and send the launch codes to our Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines if Leonid Brezhnev had forced our hand. I consider it a true insult for someone to call me a liberal.
Even as much as I would feel insulted by being called a liberal, I would rather eat the sugar coating of many of the liberals that I do know than the feces coating that you are propagating in tour blog. I would also consider being called a liberal to be far less of an insult than if someone called me ‘George Fallon’!!!!
August 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Brian,
In the early 2000’s (2002, I think), the republicans tried to regulate Fannie and Freddie Mae. The democrats in the Senate filibustered the regulations. They said that nothing was wrong.
Frank
August 9th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I think something like that happened, but under bush he was pushing for more home ownership thru fannie and freddie to create more ownership classes, and even mccain supported it. I think select members of both parties got involved at different times for idiosyncratic local reasons. apparently the end result of the whole fannie mae program was it lowered home loan interest rates 0.7 percent off of what they would have been without fannie. Doesn’t sound worth it to me.
August 9th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Bill,
The figures you provided account for all of the debt. Those figures include debt held by the public, and the debt held in intragovernmantal holdings (almost entirely Social Security).
The breakdown as of Thursday August 6, 2009 was:
7,329,873,247,080.89 (Held by public)
4,330,269,207,123.06 9(intragovernment holdings)
11,660,142,454,203.95 (National Debt)
See my post directly above.
August 9th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
You will have to wait for the post above my last. It is currently awaiting moderation.
August 9th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
frank bush put cox in charge of the sec and you call that regulation? look at all the stuff cox did to unleash the markets?
August 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Brian,
President Bush wasn’t the one pushing for more home ownership. It was the democratic bill from the late 80’s, which was amended in the 90’s and pushed heavily by the democratic minority in the early 2000’s.
Frank
August 9th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
frank, bush indeed was “also” pushing for home ownership, a big effort on his part too, and this was after the dem thing, his philosooophy was that home ownership, the ownership society would straighten people out, to follow a more constructive path
August 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
you guyz should all work on a cherry farm where you can selectively cherry pick all sunlight long and fill up your propo-ganda carts for the ride down the hill to the little people
August 9th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Dennis F, thanks for the information. It was, well… informative.
I don’t distinguish between public and intragovernmental debt because it represents the total historical excess spending over collections (approximately).
Also, I shy away from party/political analysis of debt accumulation. Technically, the President has nothing to do with spending federal money, although he does propose budgets.
Another thing to consider: So much of the annual budget is non-discretionary — money spent decades ago and required thereafter.
If I were a teenager now, I’d be extremely worried about my financial future (well maybe not, but I should be). The excesses of the last 60-70 years will be paid for by future generations, and that’s a tragedy. We’ve failed to leave the country to our children better off than what we inherited.