Debt Drama Drags Downward
Ugh, this is interminable.
It seems the President has allowed Turbo Timmy to take default off the table as a political weapon. If we’re paying bondholders, we’re not in default, and no, getting a Social Security check does not make you a bondholder. So at least there’s that.
On the other hand, no one in a position of leadership is taking the bold step of suggesting an elimination of the deficit for the next budget, however long it is specified to last. Of course the President won’t sign it, since he’s a Keynesian, and his party won’t let it pass the Senate, but it was just a thought.
Of course back when this started to boil over like an unwatched wort, Boehner did suggest a dollar of debt limit target increase for a dollar of spending cuts, and the President refused. But those weren’t real cuts – they were just reductions in the amount of projected increases in spending, which translates to a budget line with a positive slope, but less positive than the other guys budget.
I think they take us for fools. Nope, I don’t just think it, I’m convinced of it.
Somewhere in the quote list on the right hand side of this blog (which is apparently not working right now) you will find the following:
… a tax cut without a spending cut isn’t a tax cut at all, because it just transforms the nature of the tax to inflation or debt.
It’s from Thomas R. Eddlem, and it captures the nature of the problem: all spending must be paid for at some point in time, either now or in the future. Increasing spending, at any rate, increases our debt and puts us closer to the inevitable default, when we can’t use incoming revenue to pay creditors only because the incoming will be less than the outgoing.
We will get downgraded, and likely as soon as we pass a budget, so I’m glad the tea party candidates are holding up Speaker Boehner’s budget from accounting hell.