The Republicans cry like babies about the debt and deficits when a Democrat is President, but they spend like drunken sailors when a Republican sits in the Oval Office.  Is the debt nearly so bad as they claim?  NO!  The following was sent to David Gregory on Meet the Press.

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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