U.S. National debt exceeds legal limit.

• derek bomar

  

  I agree. I would love to see a viable 3rd party - someone who actually would be honest and tell people the hard truth and not be enslaved by special interests
• Last.Name.Left

  http://www.usdebtclock.org/
  
  I'm not sure precisely how independent this source is, but no matter which way you cut it its got some big numbers with big consequences if a leader doesn't stop the spending.
• dwccrew

  

  derek bomar wrote: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
  
  this link pretty much explains that the recession and the Bush tax cuts are mostly responsible for our current and future budget deficits...Barry's plans don't amount to much in future years, but the tax cuts are HUGE

  The tax cuts would have worked has Bush and Congress limited their spending. Instead they decided to continue to spend while cutting taxes. It doesn't work that way.
• eersandbeers

  dwccrew wrote:

  derek bomar wrote: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
  
  this link pretty much explains that the recession and the Bush tax cuts are mostly responsible for our current and future budget deficits...Barry's plans don't amount to much in future years, but the tax cuts are HUGE

  The tax cuts would have worked has Bush and Congress limited their spending. Instead they decided to continue to spend while cutting taxes. It doesn't work that way.

  
  +1
  
  Common sense would tell a 5th grader that you can't cut taxes with unprecedented spending.
• IggyPride00

  

  Common sense would tell a 5th grader that you can't cut taxes with unprecedented spending.

  Not true. Ronald Reagan did exactly that (cut taxes and ramped up spending), and if you remember correctly Ronald Reagan taught us that "deficits don't matter", according to Dick Cheney that is.
• dwccrew

  

  IggyPride00 wrote:

  Common sense would tell a 5th grader that you can't cut taxes with unprecedented spending.

  Not true. Ronald Reagan did exactly that (cut taxes and ramped up spending), and if you remember correctly Ronald Reagan taught us that "deficits don't matter", according to Dick Cheney that is.

  Which is exactly why we are in the situation we are in.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  True. Of course you can't raise taxes to pay for outrageous spending either because no matter how high you raise them the government will always collect right around the same amount of money anyway. I guess the answer is to stop spending.
• majorspark

  

  Cleveland Buck wrote: True. Of course you can't raise taxes to pay for outrageous spending either because no matter how high you raise them the government will always collect right around the same amount of money anyway. I guess the answer is to stop spending.

  That is the only answer.
• IggyPride00

  

  I guess the answer is to stop spending.

  That is impossible, because it opens you up to so many political attacks from the other side that allows people to demagogue on issues they don't even care about.
  
  Even discuss cutting the defense budget, and you are suddenly anti-American and hate the troops. Discuss cutting Medicare, and you are accused of wanting Granny to die in the streets. Same thing applies to S.S, where you whip seniors up into a frenzy but scaring them.
  
  You can't cut the soon to be nearly $500 billion a year we spend on interest on the national debt (nearly 25% of total tax collections), and we haven't even started discussing discretionary spending.
  
  We could cut every dollar of spending outside of those 4 areas and we would still be running a huge deficit.
  
  This is why we need the independent council that Judd Gregg and Kent Conrad have talked about setting up in terms of looking at ways to balance the budget through spending cuts and tax increases (it is going to take a combination of both as hard as that might be for some to accept). As long as it is up to Congress, it can never happen as political opportunism will always carry the day over doing what is right for the country.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  You are absolutely right that it would be political suicide. I didn't say my solution was realistic. I just said it was the solution. There are no realistic solutions. Even if they balance the budget (take in as much as they spend), we still have a $12 trillion debt that grows every year from interest. They can't just balance the budget, they have to take in more than they spend and start paying down the debt.
• I Wear Pants

  derek bomar wrote: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
  
  this link pretty much explains that the recession and the Bush tax cuts are mostly responsible for our current and future budget deficits...Barry's plans don't amount to much in future years, but the tax cuts are HUGE

  I don't get why it's so confusing for people to realize that you can't cut taxes at the same time you increase spending (like when you start two wars on the other side of the globe). It's the same shit we did in Vietnam which led to that nice period in the 70s with fun new words like "stagflation" having to be invented.