David, Paul Ryan
repeatedly claimed that we are going to burden our children with a huge debt.
Do you feel burdened with the debt that has been run up by past
Republican administrations? How are we burdened? When Bill Clinton
was President, the Republicans called for a balanced budget amendment and for
the president to have the line item veto so that he could veto, by line,
congressional spending bills. When George W. Bush was appointed
President, he immediately asked for huge tax cuts, started an
unnecessary war with Iraq, ignored warnings about threats to this country that
allowed the attacks of 9/11/2001 and more than doubled the national debt.
Now the Republicans are calling for a balanced budget amendment and are
calling for deficit reductions. They are only fiscal conservatives when
we have a Democratic President. Cutting government spending would only turn
this country back toward a huge recession.
The fact is that
spending is the problem, we are not spending enough to restore our
infrastructure, to support education at all levels, to help states to put more
police, teachers and fire fighters on the job. The debt is not the
problem, the weak job market is and it will only get better by spending on all
of those things. The Republicans should raise revenues by cutting loopholes that allow
very rich Americans to avoid taxes. A good suggestion that has been
floated before and has been resurrected in recent days ---This was written in January, 2013--- is that there should be
a tax on stock trades that would be dedicated to supporting Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid.
Please see my analysis
of our national debt below:
Subject: What's the fuss? Part of this was
originally published on my Facebook page
What is all the fuss over the national debt? No one that I can think of has expressed 16 Trillion dollars today in terms of constant dollars in the year 1980. If we have a financial expert on Facebook on on Google Blogger, check this for accuracy. I just calculated what the national debt is in constant dollars using the year 1980 as my base year. My numbers, if they are correct, show me that $16 trillion today is only the equivalent to $5.742 trillion in the year 1980 dollars. Does that sound as dreadful as the republicans want you to think about our current debt? Reagan tripled the debt in 8 years, George H. W. increased that debt by 150% and George W. more than doubled the debt in his 8 years, so why does President Obama get all the blame for our current national debt that has grown over 33 years by just over 574% in constant dollars from less than one trillion nominal dollars in 1980 to its current dollar inflated value of 16 trillion today. This country is still in an economic recovery period. We are still working our way out of the recession that had been underway for over two years before George Dubya Bush left office. This is not the time to cut spending.
Since 1980, the U.S.
population has increased by 84 million or 37%. If we factor in the increase in
population between the years 1980 and 2012 Spreading the debt across our
entire population in 2012 would shrink the adjusted per-capita national debt to
give a more accurate picture of U.S. debt and make it look much less of a
problem.
While I agree that we
should control our deficits, we still must grow our economy. At today's
low interest rates, this is the time that we should be borrowing to build long
term infrastructure and to improve education and; thereby, to increase
employment and tax revenues. The St. Louis Federal Reserve estimates that
the velocity of money supply is currently at 7, that is the number of times one dollar spent in a year turns over in the economy. If that is true,
injecting $1000 into our economy today should increase consumer a business spending by $7000 in a
year's time. That would help to multiply the impact that spending would have on our
economy. We can spend money to energize our economy and can we can close
loopholes for big corporations and the top 2% and still shrink the debt while
generating more jobs and boosting our GDP.
Would somebody please pass the Kleenex so that John Boehner and the Tea Party can wipe their tear away and get something done to strengthen our economy?
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