What a tool! We are broke and China owns a large part of the debt.
The great part of this is that when GWB ran up deficits, the GOP never said a word. Now that Obama is racking up debt, Dems are tripping over each other to defend his $1.6 trillion/yr deficit.
Didn't read this nonsense and don't plan to. Apply the numbers to your own life. You make $21,000 per year, you spend $37,000 per year. You are beyond fucking broke. Don't think so, try to live your life like this for, let's say, a month; by May, you'll be living in a tent.
Simplistic, maybe, but just add a couple-three comma's to those numbers and you'll arrive at the Fed's.
We'll have to break in and steal that money from other people to gain the funds needed to live the same way. The Government just uses it's power to steal that wealth by law or regulation. If only the mob could became government officials for such power to steal legally?
Seriously, this isn't even an article. This is "the us isn't broke because I don't think it is. I think that the rich and the corporations have more than enough money to pay for whatever the government wants to do."
I'm not even reaching to summarize it that way. It's also not the first time I've seen this POS op-ed posted as proof we have funds.
In simplest terms, our federal tax revenue this year has been exceeded by non-discretionary spending. So not only do we have to borrow to finance the discretionary budget, but we have to borrow to service the interest on already existent debt. Approximately 43% of the US debt now has to be rolled over within any given 12 month period. For this year that means we have to cover and additional $1.3 trillion. Which is about 38% of the fiscal year 2012 budget. Then on top of that, public debt interest payments are another $250 billion . Historically payments on internal debt are about equal to public debt. For 2011, the official word is that it is about 45%. Which means another $120 billion in interest. (I suspect that number is a lie, as that is lower than in previous years when we haven't been pulling the shenanigans with the federal reserve floating bonds. Or they may just be counting those as public debt.
That means to make it through the year, we have to borrow $1.7 trillion dollars, as well as refinance approximately another $4 trillion of debt.
Regardless of what you choose to spend that tax dollar on, we HAVE to be spending less of them. I also think we need to focus on spending them on things that have the potential to increase the tax base beyond the cash outlay for that year (i.e. invest in the growth of the economy and the increased income potential of the citizenry). Neither party is doing any of the above very well.
steamed
I strongly fantasize this.