Government Spending Drives Debt Limit Higher

[P@triot]

It's really sad how dumbocrats are collapsing the U.S.

Chart: Government Spending Drives Debt Limit Higher

 

[waltky]

Granny says dat oughta lead to some more gridlock...

No Hike in Debt Limit Without Deal to Balance Budget
January 17, 2013 – In a memo that will be delivered to House Republican leaders at their annual meeting in Williamsburg, Va., conservative leaders are saying: Don't cut a deal with President Obama to increase the debt limit unless it cuts spending immediately and puts the federal government on a fiscal path that balances the budget within 10 years.

“Today is the day we stop stealing from our children,” says the memo headlined, "Congress Must Pass a 10-Year Pathway to Balance to Raise Debt Limit." (Memo for the Movement.pdf) “Conservatives should not raise our nation’s statutory debt limit unless Congress passes and the President signs into law real reforms and immediate spending reductions that place America on a path to balance within 10 years without raising taxes and keeping the budget in balance," the memo states.

The debt limit is the amount of money Congress has legally authorized the U.S. Treasury to borrow government. The Treasury is now at the current limit of $16.39 trillion and cannot legally increase the net debt of the government. The memo from the conservative leaders further says that Congress should pass a bill to give the Treasury Department explicit authority to prioritize federal spending commitments in the event the debt ceiling is breached, averting the possibility of a default. “President Obama fought for and won a $2.1 trillion increase in our nation’s statutory debt limit,” the memo reads. “Because of massive overspending, America is on an unsustainable fiscal path. Unless immediate action is taken, our future is destined to be that of Greek-style implosion or the slow managed decline of Western Europe. Neither option is acceptable.”

The memo says that balancing the budget within the decade is a “moral obligation” and repeats the long-held conservative position that any balanced budget or debt ceiling deal should include no further increases in tax revenue. Among the signatories on the memo are the heads of some of the largest conservative grassroots organizations, including the Club for Growth, Heritage Action, the conservative blog RedState, and the umbrella group Council for National Policy. ForAmerica Chairman Brent Bozell also signed onto the memo. He is the president of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com. Other signers included Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; former Indiana congressman David McIntosh; and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III.

The memo rebuts claims from Democrats and others that breaching the debt ceiling would result in a default, explaining that Treasury can prioritize interest payments to avoid default. “The United States will not default on its debt and the full faith and credit of America will not be questioned,” the memo says. “Not only does the federal government have the funds necessary to service our debt, the executive branch has a constitutional obligation to do so. After we service the debt we also have the ability to prioritize spending obligations to ensure critical programs are funded first with remaining revenue.”

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[BreezeWood]

Government Spending Drives Debt Limit Higher

It's really sad how dumbocrats are collapsing the U.S.

It's really sad how dumbocrats are collapsing the U.S.


Odd how you blame Democrats when Bill Clinton went 5 years without raising the debt limit - that was then raised by Bush his first year in office.

the graph also shows, just a massive increase in the overall economy.

 

[jwoodie]

*Republican Congress 1997-2001. Nice try.

 

[waltky]

Obama Would Support Short-Term Debt Limit Increase...

White House: Obama would sign short-term debt limit increase
WASHINGTON | Tue Jan 22, 2013 - The White House on Tuesday welcomed signals by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives that they aim to pass a nearly four-month extension of the U.S. debt limit, saying the move defuses fears of a damaging U.S. debt default.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a briefing that the Obama administration believed the debt limit should be raised over the longer term instead of in incremental steps, but the shift by House Republicans was a positive sign. "What happened ... was a very significant development in terms of de-escalating the sense of conflict over this," Carney said. President Barack Obama would not block a short-term extension if it passed Congress, he added.

"The bill still has to overcome some concerns expressed by members of the House and the Senate before it can pass both chambers and reach the president's desk," Carney said. "If it does, and it reaches the president's desk, he would not stand in the way of the bill becoming law."

The United States is due to run out of room under its congressionally-imposed borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion sometime between mid-February and early March. Congressional Republicans have in the past balked at raising the cap, insisting on matching or greater spending cuts in exchange, and raising the specter of default as a bargaining chip.

But they backed down from that hard line stance at a policy retreat last week, shifting the focus of budget battles with the White House to a March 1 date for automatic deep spending cuts and a March 27 expiration of funding for government agencies and programs. The debt ceiling extension would satisfy borrowing needs to at least May 19.

Source

See also:

Clouds over Obama's 2nd term
Pat Buchanan: Expectations for presidents are much lower than 'when we were young'

Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR’s began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP’s nomination of “the barefoot boy from Wall Street,” Wendell Willkie. What can be called Harry Truman’s second term was a disaster. In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb and China fell to Mao. In 1950, the Rosenbergs were convicted as atomic spies for Stalin, and North Korea invaded the South, igniting a three-year war Truman could not win or end.

He lost the New Hampshire primary in 1952 to Sen. Estes Kefauver, dropped out and saw would-be successor Adlai Stevenson crushed by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, as Republicans captured Congress. Truman left with the lowest approval rating of a president before or since. In his second term, Ike did better, but suffered a GOP defeat in 1958, saw Fidel Castro seize Cuba in January of 1959, and had the U-2 shot down by Russia in May 1960 and his Paris summit blown up by Nikita Khrushchev, who berated Ike to his face. His vice president, Richard Nixon, then lost the White House. The Kennedy-Johnson second term began spectacularly, with passage of all the Great Society legislation. But, in 1966, LBJ’s party suffered huge losses. In 1968, that year of assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, of race riots in a hundred cities, and of campus anarchy, antiwar protests and an endless war in Vietnam, LBJ was challenged in the primaries, quit the race and saw Nixon succeed him.

After his own 49-state re-election victory, Nixon did not survive his second term. Jimmy Carter did not get a second term. Ronald Reagan comes close to being the exception. While he lost 10 Senate seats in 1986, he cut income tax rates from 50 to 28 percent, and his summiteering with Mikhail Gorbachev is seen as a historic success, leading to America’s victory in the Cold War. The Iran-Contra scandal – trading of arms to Iran for hostages in Lebanon – almost broke his presidency. But by the time Reagan left in 1989, his popularity had been restored, the Cold War was ending, and his vice president was taking the oath of office to succeed him.

George H.W. Bush was denied a second term. And the main event of Bill Clinton’s was his impeachment and Senate trial for the Monica Lewinsky affair. In his second term, George W. Bush lost his battle for Social Security reform and lost both houses of Congress in 2006, ending his presidency with America mired in two unwinnable wars and plunging into a near-depression. By January 2009, Bush’s approval rating was approaching the Truman low, and his party had lost the White House. About Obama’s second term it is hard to be sanguine.

Read more at Clouds over Obama?s 2nd term

 

[ilia25]

It's really sad how dumbocrats are collapsing the U.S.

Chart: Government Spending Drives Debt Limit Higher

You are such a dumbass The US government budget was 1.3 million in 1779. You think that sum would be enough for government to function if only we rein in on entitlements?

 

[P@triot]

It's really sad how dumbocrats are collapsing the U.S.

Chart: Government Spending Drives Debt Limit Higher

You are such a dumbass The US government budget was 1.3 million in 1779. You think that sum would be enough for government to function if only we rein in on entitlements?

"Rein in entitlements"? No. Get rid of those unconstitutional disasters along with unconstitutional departments such as education, energy, etc.? Well, you'd be amazed what we could run our federal government off of if it were constitutional. It would be more than $1.3 million certainly, but a hell of a lot less than the obnoxious, nation-collapsing amount required as it stands now.

 

[ilia25]

It's really sad how dumbocrats are collapsing the U.S.

Chart: Government Spending Drives Debt Limit Higher

You are such a dumbass The US government budget was 1.3 million in 1779. You think that sum would be enough for government to function if only we rein in on entitlements?

"Rein in entitlements"? No. Get rid of those unconstitutional disasters along with unconstitutional departments such as education, energy, etc.? Well, you'd be amazed what we could run our federal government off of if it were constitutional. It would be more than $1.3 million certainly

Certainly! And that is the point -- the main drivers of the spending growth over the long term are population growth, inflation and rising productivity. In other words, the spending grow with the economy.

And it means that the debt limit is a ridiculous idea, as it has to raised on a regular basis.