By Michael Snyder
Our national debt is rapidly approaching 21 trillion dollars, and yet Congress wants to follow up a large tax cut bill with a massive increase in federal spending. This is absolute madness, and it is going to make our long-term financial problems as a nation far worse. After passing the tax bill, the appropriate thing to do would have been to cut federal spending. Yes, that would have not been a positive thing for the economy in the short-term, but we must start addressing our long-term priorities. If we do not do something about this exploding national debt, it could potentially destroy our republic all by itself.
Earlier today, I was absolutely horrified when I learned of a budget deal in the Senate that would increase federal spending by about 200 billion dollars in each of the next two years…
The Senate’s Republican and Democratic leaders unveiled a sweeping two-year budget agreement on Wednesday that would increase federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars on domestic and defense programs alike.
That deal would eliminate strict budget caps, set in 2011 to reduce the federal deficit, and would allow Congress to spend about $200 billion more in the current fiscal year and in fiscal year 2019.
Seriously?
Our federal debt is going to hit 21 trillion dollars some time this year, and they want to throw hundreds of billions of dollars more spending on top of what we are already doing?
This alone is why we need true conservatives all over the nation to run for Congress. Our endless greed is literally destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.
I don’t know if I even have the words to describe how foolish our leaders are being. If interest rates on government debt were to return to their long-term averages, the game would already be over. We should be desperately attempting to get our financial house in order, but instead we are spending money as if tomorrow will never come.
But tomorrow always arrives, and a day of reckoning is fast approaching.
Fortunately, there are some members of Congress that seem to understand that we cannot keep spending money that we do not have. The following comes from USA Today…
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who chairs the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, wants to see what comes back from the Senate, said his spokesman Ben Williamson.
“But if the numbers are as high as we’re hearing, Rep. Meadows does not support the budget deal,” Williamson said.
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said “this spending bill is a debt junkie’s dream… I’m not only a ‘no.’ I’m a ‘hell no.’”
As a member of Congress, I would always be a resounding “no” vote on these sorts of absurd budget deals.
Whatever happened to all of the strong fiscal conservatives that we sent to Congress during the days of the Tea Party movement? So many of them seem to have been enveloped by the swamp and are now doing whatever party leadership tells them to do.
Sadly, most Americans don’t even seem to understand that we have been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt since Barack Obama first entered the White House. The following is an extended excerpt from one of my previous articles…
When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. national debt was just over 10.6 trillion dollars, and when he left the White House 8 years later it was sitting just shy of 20 trillion dollars.
So during those 8 years more than 9 trillion dollars was added to the national debt. But for purposes of this example we will round down to an even 9 trillion dollars.
When you divide 9 trillion dollars by 8, you get an average of 1.125 trillion dollars that was added to the national debt per year during the Obama era.
Dividing that figure by 365, you find that an average of $3,082,191,780 was added to the national debt every single day during the Obama administration.
And since there are 24 hours in a day, that means that an average of $128,424,657 was stolen from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day while Barack Obama was president.
Under President Trump, we should be dramatically reducing federal spending and the size of the federal government.
Yes, this would hurt the economy in the short-term, but if we continue down the road we are currently on it is a recipe for national suicide.
As interest rates rise, it won’t be too long before we are paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt. And when America plunges into a debt nightmare, there won’t be anyone in the entire world big enough to bail us out.
America cannot be great again if we are drowning in debt. What is happening in Washington is utter madness, and it should greatly anger all of us that our irresponsible politicians are systematically destroying the greatest republic that the world has ever seen.
Seven skinny cows eating seven FAT cows …… is Anyone CONSERVATIVE left in America?
This year the BANKSTERS take $276.2 billion from you as “interest” on just the National Debt. Here is the Debt Clock – http://www.usdebtclock.org/ — you can watch it real time. This is at a time of historically low rates ….. what happens when rates go up? Trump is INCREASING the debt, and thus the interest payments at a time of increasing interest rates. You pay your debts off when times are good ….. remember the 7 skinny cows eating the 7 fat cows???
Keep digging — http://investmentwatchblog.com/credit-card-payments-and-subprime-auto-defaults-are-soaring-holiday-spending-set-to-hit-12-year-high-thanks-to-debt/
Get some FACTS straight …. the DOW, NASDAQ, & S&P are hitting all time highs. Unemployment is supposed to be at all time LOWS. We are supposedly having a glorious upsurge in the economy, If we do not pay off the debt NOW when will we? All this glorious economic news and we still have DEFICITS?! Why do you have to “cut taxes for the already rich” so they will supposedly be inspired to create more jobs …… when everybody is supposedly employed???!! And the true job creation is proven to be by Small Business and financed by Middle Class spending, NOT by millionaires.
“the tax cut is an exercise in willful blindness. The same no doubt could be said for the 1981 Reagan tax cuts, which predictably led to unprecedented deficits when Republicans as well as Democrats balked at making offsetting budget cuts. Yet at the time a whole band of officials in the White House and the Congress clamored, in some cases desperately, for such reductions. They accepted a realm of objective reality that existed separately from their own wishes. But in 2017, when the Congressional Budget Office and other neutral arbiters concluded that the tax cuts would not begin to pay for themselves, the White House and congressional leaders simply dismissed the forecasts as too gloomy.” http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-25/us-has-reached-last-stage-collapse
“Alas, all you suckers out there are , like this writer, a few paychecks away from financial uncertainty. The less than one thousand dollars extra per year that this bill will throw you is nothing compared to the mega millions the super rich and the large corporations will see added to their spreadsheets. https://www.globalresearch.ca/must-be-the-season-of-the-rich/5623913
Whilst the elite owns most of the assets, ordinary people own the debt. Not just their own debt but also the public debt burden which irresponsible governments have built up, including unfunded liabilities such as pension and medical care. And when the financial system fails, ordinary people will suffer the most.
“USA is ‘out of whack’ with the rest of the world” ???? USA is fighting and PAYING for most of the WARS. Make those other countries pay for the wars and watch their tax rates rise. Better yet …. STOP the wars we are in. We are losing them anyway ……………
We should be raising taxes. If these Billionaires had to pay a proportionate amount equal to the benefit they derive from Us protecting Their money, property, LIVES …….. they would take an interest in getting a GOOD government not just one that serves their immediate interests …. They would insist on ending corruption and waste and balancing the books. People whine there is no such thing as “fair” taxes ,,,,, but there is . The Workers pay with blood & money for ONE house with a mortgage to the BANKSTERS ….. counting all they pay for state, local, sales, federal taxes 1/3 of their gross. The Billionaires whine they need tax cuts “to create jobs” and NEVER SERVE in uniform so they never get PTSD, amputations, maimed or die.
TAKE 60% of their gross because they own multiple homes with NO mortgages.
It is past time these Billionaires & mega-corporations PAY for the wars from which they profit and which protect them. Either PAY for the wars, or we put your Boards of Directors in the Front Lines to BLEED with us working stiffs. You want to move your corporation, OUR JOBS, to another country to dodge taxes here? So WE have to pay for your wars? Over YOUR DEAD BODIES. The U.S. has intervened militarily and covertly in so many nations it is impossible to recount them all but in every case the American military is protecting some investments of value to American corporations, or a strategic position or both.
Those who benefit the most should contribute a proportionate share.
Amazing that all these leftwing tech billionaires do not want to share THEIR wealth. They always talk left wing “communalism” but they clutch their money like it is life itself ….Even when they “give” charity it is through THEIR trusts &foundations that THEY control and reapTAX BENEFITS FROM. Even though They are always eager to spread YOUR money around……
Time for the 1% to contribute PROPORTIONALLY to the War Efforts. Much is expected from those to whom much is given.
Some of our Troops give ALL, or are maimed for life,and the 1% balks at giving MONEY when they have so much?!
Cut taxes for the “Rich” so they will invest their money in creating more jobs? By that logic giving ALL your money to the Rich would make Everyone rich. Humanity already tried that. It was called FEUDALISM, a primitive form of COMMUNISM.
LISTEN to what these neocon PSEUDO-capitalists are saying:
“TAKE from the POOR and GIVE to the RICH”
“FROM each according to their ABILITY, TO each according to their NEED. The POOR have the ABILITY to be squeezed for more taxes …….. and the Rich NEED more money …… to create jobs”???????.
This is INSANITY, this is C-O-M-M-U-N-I-S-M by a different name.
MAKE ZUCKerberg and these other Billionaires want to flood the labor pool and drive down YOUR wages with cheap illegals & invaders ….. . As it is, YOU pay to bring in and train YOUR replacements.
The rich “Nobles” paid NO taxes and they created LOTS of jobs for the SERFS and PEASANTS………building CASTLES and making life better for the RICH-NOBILITY. Work and Taxes was all the Serfs knew. Where do the heroic figures of Robin Hood and William Tell spring from if not resistance to this inane idea? Seing this extremist idea dragged out of the muck of history proves to me that our Nation has truly been DUMBED DOWN and Public Schools need to be upgraded and intensified.
Quit living in Never-Never Land where Wars are not paid for. The Founding Fathers of America didn’t. The Founding Fathers were rich, but they knew it was their CIVIC DUTY to contribute. It was called LEADERSHIP. They personally “raised” entire companies of men for the war. That means THEY PAID FOR THEM. Not like today when the YELLOW-BELLIED-DRAFT-DODGING Neocan WAR PROFITEERS beat the drums for endless war, and insist that YOU pay for it, while they reap profit off Defense Stocks. It is REALITY CHECK time America. Make those who pound the War Drums, GO TO THE WAR.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/761369a2aaf9ad10d428b8e7c45556fb3d79b40e3596a3120b6e7e5c9c985139.jpg
“INCOME” is the money that in-comes from dividends, interest on bonds and lending, capital gains from selling stocks or investments at a profit. SALARIES and WAGES are NOT “income”.
“Under former decisions here, the settled doctrine is that the 16th Amendment confers no power upon Congress to define and tax as income without apportionment something which theretofore could not have been properly regarded as income…the provisions of section 20282 which fixes the basis for determining the gain or loss in the case of property acquired by gift is constitutional for the reason that it results in a tax upon income and not upon capital.” 1928 Supreme court case of Caft v. Bowers (71 Lawyers Ed. 463), Cites Eisner v. Macomber, Merchants Loan & Trust v. Smietanka (1921) and the Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust Co. (1895)
Exactly. But they’ve sold the lie quite well.
Yes, it is insanity. What happened to the OMB proposed budget when Trump entered office promising significantly reduced spending. Oh look, I see it fluttering out the window.
Better start supporting the debt by issuing Treasury Notes and NOT FED Notes! Bring back Lincoln’s Green backs!
There are no conservatives, slave. The political class filth are money grabbers, all of them.
Back in the early 1980s we had run into what appeared at the time to be an unsolvable political dilemma. There was no funding for the hundreds of billions in deficit spending Reagan proposed as his solution to the intractable resession we were suffering. Back then a yearly deficit of 50 billion was large; the entire government debt was about 1 Trillion.. I remember thinking there is NO WAY they can pull this off. It was UNTHINKABLE, literally, to consider the Federal Government BORROWING hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
This was our crossing of the Rubicon; we have not looked back. The debt will grow until it implodes or explodes and it will be GONE. I guess this is what the geniuses have figured out. I have but one question for them.
What happens after the debt is defaulted and/or inflated away?
I’ll tell you what. Decades and decades of HARD TIMES at best.
“Is Washington Nuts? Increasing Spending AND Cutting Taxes Will EXPLODE The Size Of The National Debt’
Yes, that is the way things work.
But Washington’s priorities are quite different.
As in rewarding the America plutocracy.
As in grabbing some new headlines with recycled cliches about the effects of massive tax cuts producing new wealth for everyone.
It would be nice to see some of the die-hard Trump supporters realize that they’ve bought a huge pig in a poke.
The man is incompetent and corrupt. Just like the Republican Party. Just like the Democrat Party. Just like pretty much the entire American ruling elite.
The country is headed for a big, big fall because its just cannot stop itself from constantly grabbing for more, from constantly over-extending itself.
It does this in its national finances. Even more dangerously, it is doing this with its military in making with new aggressive policies and threats in half a dozen places and spending money it doesn’t have.
“The swamp” just received billions in subsidies from a country that cannot even pay its bills.
Trump will turn out to have been a bigger joke and a grander phony than Bernie Madoff.