The Debt Ceiling and Deficit Spending Levels

Here are some numbers that look pretty straight foward.  If you're like me, this stuff can make your eyes glaze over and you want to leave it to the politicians.  But we can't. In a representative democracy, which is what we've become (at least in name), it is your responsibility, your civic duty, to use terms long out of fashion, to be an informed voter.  You can no more throw up your hands over this and decide it has nothing to do with you (assuming you're an American) than you can responsibly ignore the numbers of your own household income and outgo:

Here are some overlooked or under-reported facts to help clear the fog of this week’s Debt Ceiling Wars.

First, where do we stand, exactly?

The budget for fiscal year 2011, which began October 1, 2010, and ends September 30, 2011, was passed in April, 2011. The Congressional Budget Office sets tax revenues at $2.228 trillion and expenditures at $3.7 trillion, with a deficit of $1.48 trillion.

Right now, the total debt is $14.3 trillion. The Treasury Department reports interest payments on the national debt on a quarterly basis. For fiscal year 2011, total interest payments for the first three quarters were $385.9 billion. For fiscal 2010, interest payments totaled about $413.9 billion.

Others, using Treasury Department data, say that on August 2, the federal government is due to pay about $35 billion in interest to bond holders. On August 3, the government is due to pay about $61 billion in Social Security and disability funds.

In 2006 when then President Bush wanted to raise the debt ceiling from 8.3 (or .2, I forget) to 9 trillion, then Senator Obama said that was failed leadership, irresponsible, and putting too much of a burden on the backs of our children and grandchildren. He was right then. Nothing has happened that somehow makes a 16.5 trillion debt ceiling (which is what he's asking for and even that is only until the election, which he will ask for more) 'responsible.'

We have to stop this. And given the past history and behavior of both parties, we cannot trust them with more taxes. They have to start with deep, painful cuts. They have to live with those cuts (and so do we). Giving them any more 'revenues' (which means our money) right now is like giving an alcoholic a bottle of rum because he promises he can fix this problem as soon as he gets some booze. It's like a battered wife coming home to her abuser because he promises if she'll just let him hit her one more time, then he'll behave.

We have seen some words, but not much action demonstrating they are serious enough to trust them with more of our money. Consider the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill which supposedly is an example of the Republicans standing firm (or being obstructive, depending on which side of the aisle you call home):

Under the bill, the debt ceiling would be raised by $2.5 trillion, which is the amount President Obama wants to borrow and spend to tide him over until the 2012 election. In return, federal spending would be cut by about $111 billion. But a cut this size amounts only to 4.4 percent of the $2.5 trillion President Obama will be authorized to borrow and spend in the next 18 months. And it would be about three percent of the $3.7 trillion budget Obama proposed in February, rejected in May.

That's not enough. Even the Whitehouse's own Government Accountability Office report found more government waste and duplicate services than that piddling 111 billion (a report both sides are largely ignoring).

As small as this 'cut' is, the President is threatening to veto it.  The only specific plan the President has published increases budget spending, and his complaints about the Cut, Cap and Balance bill make it sound like what he wants is simply:

eternal deficit spending, with no attempt at any discipline whatsoever

Unfortunately, so long as all of us expect the government to protect us from losing our homes, to give us a free college education, to feed our kids, and to stick its fingers in every pie, that's really what we want, too.