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DesideriScuri -> RE: No worries about the shutdown (10/2/2013 12:26:59 PM)
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ORIGINAL: graceadieu
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: graceadieu
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: graceadieu
But trying to hold hostage the functioning of our government and the paychecks of millions of people in order to force their political opponents to vote against the will of the legislature and their constituency is madness and anarchy and not at all part of our civil governmental process.
Sorry, but that's what is called "leverage."
Also part of our civil government process.
Shutting down the government is not part of having a responsible civil government. Neither is threatening to default on our national debts.
It's like if you told your boss "double my pay, or I'll smash up the office with a sledgehammer". That's leverage, sure, but it sure as hell isn't responsible.
Funny thing is, we have money coming in, don't we? We won't default on our debts unless the President decides to.
A responsible civil government wouldn't be in this situation, either.
Some federal programs - Social Security, Medicare, USPS, etc - pay for themselves via payroll taxes and fees. But the federal government just doen't have enough revenue coming in to cover our discretionary spending (mainly defense), and haven't since GWB came into office. (Clearly, increasing spending and reducing revenue was not a great way to pay the bills.)
So we have these programs, spend the money, and then when we get the bill afterwards, we sometimes need to borrow money to pay it. But every so often, we hit the "debt ceiling" Congress has imposed, and so they need to vote to let the Treasury borrow more money to pay for the goods and services that the government already bought, and to pay back loans the government took out in previous years.
For the last few months, the Treasury has been borrowing money from the Federal pension fund so they can pay the bills, as an emergency measure. But they're about to hit a point where they can't do that anymore.
It's like, I guess... you have your doctor bill you for some tests they did. You get the bill, and it turns out it's more than you can pay that month. Would you put it on your credit card (borrow money) or just refuse to pay?
At what point in time does the "credit card company" come in and say, "no more?"
Would you rather that day come now, or after we've racked up even more debt and expanded the amount of spending we are doing?
The amount of spending we have is unsustainable. And, yes, that certainly does include defense.
OMB Historical table in dollars
2012 Revenues: $2.45T, 3rd highest all-time
2012 Expenditures: $3.537T, 2nd highest all-time
2013 Estimated R/E (all time rank): $2.712T (1st)/$3.777T (1st)
OMB Historical Table in terms of %GDP
2012 R/E (as %GDP): 15.8%/22.8%
2013 est. R/E: 16.7%/22.7% (and, that includes an economy that increases 4%)
Estimates of 2017 show that tax receipts get back up to nearly 19%GDP (18.8%) and spending continues to drop as a %GDP to 21.3%, but all that hinges on GDP growing by 22.2% from 2012 (an annual 5.15% GDP growth rate).
Understanding that many things factor into revenues and that revenues are not directly related to GDP, it's interesting to think that GDP and revenues are going to climb like that. Spending, sure, but revenues? I don't know.
With estimates of our spending continuing to rise and stay beyond our revenues, why is it assumed that our borrowers will continue to loan us money?
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