Date: 05/23/2011
by Ron Paul
The federal government once again has reached the limit of its legal ability to borrow money, meaning it cannot issue new Treasury debt without action by Congress to increase the debt ceiling limit. As of this month, our “official” national debt- which doesn’t include the staggering future payments promised to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries- stands at $14.2 trillion.
The debt ceiling law, passed in 1917, enables Congress to place a statutory cap on the total amount of government debt rather than having to approve each individual Treasury bond offering. It also, however, forces Congress into an open and presumably somewhat shameful vote to approve more borrowing. If the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives gives in to establishment pressure by voting to increase the debt ceiling once again, you will know that the status quo has prevailed. You will know that the simple notion of balancing the budget, by limiting federal spending to federal revenue, remains a shallow and laughable campaign platitude.
It is predictable that Congress will once again merely delay the inevitable and raise the debt ceiling, after the usual rhetoric about controlling spending, making cuts, and yes, raising taxes. We have heard endless warnings about how irresponsible it would be to “shut down the government.” The implication is that sober, rational, mature pundits and politicians understand reality, while those who oppose raising the debt ceiling limit are reckless ideologues who will harm the economy just to make a point.
But like any debtor that has to reduce its spending, the federal government simply needs to establish priorities and stop spending money on anything other than those priorities. Interest payments on our federal bond debt likely will amount to about $500 billion for fiscal year 2011, an average of $41 billion per month. Federal tax revenues vary by month, but should total around $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion for FY 2011– an average of perhaps $180 billion per month. So clearly the federal government has sufficient tax revenue to make interest payments to our creditors. For now, those interest payments represent about 12% of the total federal budget.
What nobody wants to admit is this: even if the federal government has only $1.5 trillion remaining to spend in 2011 after interest payments, this is PLENTY to fund the constitutional functions of government. After all, the entire federal budget in 1990 was about $1 trillion. Does anyone seriously believe the federal government was too small or too frugal just 20 years ago? Hardly. So why have we allowed the federal budget to quadruple during those 20 years?
The truth is, in spite of how cataclysmic some might say it would be if we did not pass a new debt ceiling, it is hardly the catastrophe that has been advertised. The debt ceiling is a self-imposed limit on borrowing. The signal congress sends to worldwide markets by raising the debt ceiling is simple: business as usual will continue in Washington; no real spending cuts will be made; and fiscal austerity will remain a pipe dream.
When our creditors finally wise up and cut us off, we will be forced to face economic realities whether we want to or not. It would be easier to deal with the tough choices we face now, on our own terms, rather than wait until we are at the mercy of foreign creditors. However, leaders in Washington have no political will to admit that we cannot afford to continue spending without any meaningful limit. They prefer maintaining the illusion and putting off reality for another day.
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I am glad that Ron Paul has proven himself to be politically consistent for a long time! Those that share his beliefs are consistent.
The only problem that I have with Ron Paul’s solution, is that the authoritarians will also benefit and take credit.
I worry that the Tea Party folks, or rather the substantial sub-group within that group that still supports the DEA thugs, and a strong department of war will still get their way, and take away everybody else’s freedom. They will give lip service to the libertarians. They cherry-pick the constitution in the same way that they cherry-pick the bible, and cherry-pick their science. They wil cherry-pick anything that Ron Paul says, if it makes them popular with their followers.
Anybody who supports the DEA, or our foreign policy, but also is just now a Johnny-come-lately whining cry baby; only now complaining about their freedom taken away deserve to have 100% of their notes taxed away from them. Either that, or take away their religious freedom. Only then, will these authoritarian thugs know what it feels like when the shoe is on the other foot. It will become exactly equal, as far as freedom for us all goes.
This sub-group would continue to take away freedom from people who have actually been trying to live free for a long time. Many have gone to jail over it. They tend to read the first sentences of the even-numbered Bill of Rights only, and forget the spirit of the great Declaration of Independence. It is not just my property or money, but it is my life an my brain that makes me free or not.
Federal Reserve Notes are such a small sub-set of true freedom, although it is very important, because our wealth is the product of our labour. However, I consider my body to be worth quite a bit more than my personal wealth, at this point in my life. It took me 13.7 billion years to get here. In just 30 more years, I will be lucky if I am alive at 85. By then, science may advance, or be held back by those bronze-aged morralists. There is no telling what sort of laws authoritarians can invent in the future.
As Ron Paul has said, freedom is a new idea. Well, so is science. Science is followed by all people, to a degree; but most cherry-pick at it. Some believe the earth is younger than the domestication of dogs, or the tree rings on some tree fossils. Light is constant, and some of it has taken billions of years to reach hear and catch the lense of the Hubble telescope, as another example.
A free market is only free, if all people are permitted to trade. A sub-set of those in the Tea Party would continue to legislate away the hot dog stand in front of their precious resteraunt. They are anti-free-market at the local level. A good bunch of them support the military industrial complex as well – another pro-corporate-pro-group-rights, anti-free-market cartel that makes up a fairly large chunck of the overall corporate oligarchy. I have already indirectly mentioned how they throw a good number of their competiters in jail. Heaven forbid that someone should actually just grow a product in their back yard that can be used to manufacture paper, clothing, bio-degradable plastics, bio-fuels (maybe?), or grown in a different way to produce medicines or recreational drugs to compete with alcohol.
Freedom is followed by most, to a degree; but most are only interested in an irrationally, selfish form; where authoritarian laws written against those who would dare have different lifestyles of their own, and dare to live as free people, are treated as animals, by brutes in uniforms who will laugh at them. They cherry-pick who gets to live their free lifestyles and who does not.
The only problem that I have with Ron Paul’s solution, is that the authoritarians will also benefit and take credit. The group that wraps itself in a bloody flag, while carrying a bloody cross.
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hear here
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