President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

What does allowing our treasury to borrow trillions of dollars more and deficit spend -- what the debt ceiling is about -- have to do with agreeing to pay "debts that have already been promised"? As a country we owe tens of trillions of dollars; we've borrowed money that has already been spend on things we didn't pay for.

Heading into the debt ceiling nonsense, cumulative revenue (what the treasury took in from taxes mostly) was $2.7 trillion so far this year. Net interest on the massive amount of debt we had run up was at about $365 billion so far (and will end up costing somewhere on the order of $750 billion this year; more if they actually let interest rates keep rising, but that won't happen because they won't have the stomach for the consequences). The debt ceiling had zero to do with making good on our debts. We owed $365 billion (so far) on our debt, and had collected $2.7 trillion in revenue.

What the debt ceiling was about. ... was politicians who fiscally want to keep robbing from our future to dig a hole deeper that is very deep already.They have trillions of dollars of actual revenue beyond servicing the debt we are already servicing to waste however they want -- handouts, defense spending, crony capitalism to reward their supporters, whatever it is they are robbing generations ahead for. But they want to spend trillions of dollars beyond that. ... and want to borrow more to do it. A debt ceiling doesn't allow that. A debt ceiling is also a worthless construct, when it is discussed the way it has been on this thread (and by the country as a whole).

FWIW, the fantasy that we are living (and the way this gets discussed demonstrates that the general populace is just ignorant) has benefited over the last 3 presidencies and Congresses from massive debt monetization -- zero interest rate policy. They could have used that as an opportunity to actually pay down some of the massive debt the country already had. Instead. ... they did what politicians do. They made populist promises, sold "free" everything. ... and wasted trillions more that sent our accumulated debt spiraling out of control. The last two decades or so required that interest rates be price fixed to zero to keep the interest on our debt from swallowing up a much larger percentage of our tax revenues. And now? A little inflation problem (caused by the fantasy I am talking about) made it so that they have been forced to allow interest rates to rise. That means the interest expense has been rising. ... and that is happening as our elected representatives just came to an agreement to borrow trillions more while congratulating themselves for it.



If they keep acting the way they have been. ... they will end up pushing interest rates back toward zero to monetize all of the debt that people don't want to accept is a disaster for our long term health. Get used to stagflation at best and an eventual credit crisis.

 

OK. So, you can't spend anything without being able to pay for it? How about a balanced budget amendment?

Because when you are Joe Biden or Kevin McCarthy or Chuck Schumer or anyone who is making these decisions, YOU don't bear the consequences of the irresponsible behavior. ... you're playing with Monopoly money. But you certainly benefit from it personally. You literally get to spend billions of dollars corruptly to reward whoever it is that has given you your power, and it gets tacked onto the cumulative debt. The answer to that is voters voting them out. ... but the American public is dumb as fuck, dumber than ever. ... and people of all stripes are so easily seduced by populism and promises, and then remain clueless that their lives suck precisely because of the consequences of what they keep buying into. It is driving the country to ruin.

 

Justice Department will not seek criminal charges in Pence classified document probe | CNN Politics