No sooner did President Bush sign the new $800 billion raise to the national debt limit than the U.S. Treasury posted a $53.5 billion increase.
On Thursday, November 17th, the national debt stood at $7.444 trillion (that’s $7, 444,122,057,407.69) and by the close of day on Friday, when the raise was signed, the debt stood at $7,497,665,301,236.87 and we haven’t reached the end of the month yet.
Want to bet that the increase to the national debt will be $200 billion by New Year’s Day or that the federal government will exhaust the new $800 billion increase to their credit card by this time next year?
The national debt limit or “ceiling” that politicians impose on themselves is absolutely meaningless. They’ve raised it 84 times since 1940 when they started this nonsense. We are now down to a one hour debate on the subject before the House votes to raise it and they have never failed to raise it, never. Why bother with this legislative masturbation?
Robert Rubin, the former Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, claims that raising the national debt limit is necessary so the government can pay off the obligations it has already incurred. That, like so many other things about the debt is pure hogwash.
Almost half of the national debt (42 percent) is incurred by stealing entitlement money and then double billing us for it, demanding that we replace what they stole plus interest.
Social Security alone now accounts for more than 22 percent of the entire debt. And half of the interest that the Beltway Bandits hand the phony Social Security trust funds is due in December against last year’s closing balance of $1.635 trillion. If this interest is paid at the rate of 5 percent (last year it was 5.4 percent) that means that at least $40 billion will be handed the supplemental retirement system’s trust funds in December and in the form of more bogus bonds, no money involved, but increasing the national debt or the taxpaying public’s indebtedness. Then they’ll do the same thing in June when they pay the other half, all to the advantage of the crooks.
The Beltway Bandits will often tell you that this is money that the government owes itself under the Greenspan title “Intragovernmental Holdings” but there is no way any part of the debt can be redeemed with anything other than taxpayer money paid now or in the future (borrowed). And there is no way to pay down the national debt without paying off securities by “calling” them or as they mature not renewing them, a thing they manage on the “float.”
What’s more, the $417 billion deficit that the Bush administration ran up last year and promises to cut in half in the next four years (wow) does not include the money they borrowed/stole from Social Security and at least twenty other entitlements. If you add that in, the real deficit is well over $600 billion.
By their own U.S. Treasury figures, the “excess” from entitlements during fiscal 2004 was $192 billion including interest. Subtract the interest and you’ve got the actual about of surplus stolen from entitlements, $71 billion from Social Security alone
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”