Progressive Lefties At TNR Recognize Senate Deal Is "Crappy" For Them

So says Tim Noah, here:

"Nevertheless, this is still a crappy deal, and Democrats should still reject it--or be quietly pleased if House Republicans reject it (as they're threatening to do)."

I agree that the deal is crappy for Democrats, really crappy, but the objective of Obama is only political. What's good for the country is meaningless. He's counting on the right in the House to reject the deal, doing for Obama what he cannot do by himself. It is the extremists of both the left and the right which cannot see how Obama is playing them. If the House had any brains they'd take the tax deal, but I don't think they will, unlike how under Pelosi the House progressives swallowed hard and took the Senate healthcare plan instead of opposing it. Better than anyone they know that ObamaCare is not the end game, but the next step to the single payer idea for which they originally stood.

Politically Obama needed to look like a compromiser, and appear reasonable and "balanced", to match his rhetoric played out over a long period, which is now very familiar to everyone. Later he can use the political capital gained thereby to appear like a genuine savior when he swoops in to offer a tax cut to the poor to relieve these unfortunate souls victimized by Republican "intransigence" over spending cuts. Obama has been telegraphing this for what seems like forever. This lousy deal for Democrats gives all the appearance of compromise, but it is intended rather to go to the heart of the split between the more conservative House Republican caucus and the more liberal Senate Republican caucus.

Once those two groups are split publically over a vote on a bill which will wreck the lives of millions, Obama is in the strongest position ever to appear the benefactor of "the middle class", the group he most wants out of his way in his attempt to level American society. In order to really screw them, he's got to get their complete confidence first. To do so he'll throw them a tax cut bone, which the doofusses will be very thankful for and will repay their master for with grateful support when he goes after their real enemy, the rich. You know, the Romneys and Buffetts of the world who look like the guys who fire them from their jobs.

The problem with true believers is that they are true. It blinds them to the way power shifts, which is why they never succeed.

Senate Cliff Deal Settles For TEN TIMES LESS Revenue Than Cliff-Diving

As reported here:

"Before [Obama] spoke, details of the emerging deal emerged. It would raise $600 billion in revenue over the next 10 years [emphasis added] by increasing tax rates for individuals making more than $400,000 and households making above $450,000 annually, officials familiar with the talks said.  ... The Biden-McConnell negotiations appeared to offer the last hope for avoiding the fiscal cliff of $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that economists fear could throw the country back into recession."

$600 billion over ten years?

Notice how CNBC leaves out "per year" after "$600 billion" in that second part of the snip after the elipsis. A $600 billion annual hit to the economy would be bad indeed, but only because it would post as a bookkeeping negative. Government spending counts as GDP, and removing $600 billion annually from the pool of funds normally tallied under GDP would "book" a recession before we even got there.

Look, by letting the Bush tax rates expire we were supposed to face a tax increase generating revenues of $500 billion PER YEAR or so, plus $100 billion per year from separately agreed to sequestration cuts to defense and social spending from August 2011's debt-ceiling imbroglio. That's why this fiscal cliff was such a big deal. We were talking $600 billion per year in the case of the Bush tax cuts expiring, not $60 billion per year as the Senate has now agreed. Tax increases on the first $9,000 of income ALONE would have generated $65 billion per year by letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the lowest wage earners for the simple reason that that tax increase affects EVERYONE'S first $9,000 of income. That's how progressive taxation works. Keep going on up the income ladder with all those expiring Bush tax rates reverting to the higher Clinton rates and soon you are talking about $500-$600 billion PER YEAR in revenues. What do you think Obama and Dirty Harry Reid have been greedily eyeing after all? That they are caving to this "deal" just shows how really weak is their position, and how much power the House has in fact, if only they understood it.

Unless of course it is all an elaborate ruse, a trap for the House, which just might be conservative enough to reject the deal for its surrealism at a time when the political consensus in favor of "balance" is rearing its ugly head. In which case the political position of the conservative House will be marginalized more or less indefinitely, and the political power of the Senate enhanced.

The US Senate is clearly the most despicable institution in the federal system, if that were possible, for obscuring all this from the American people, for the way bipartisanship means liberals get to remain liberal while Republicans have to check their conservatism with the coat girl, for continuing to spend through borrowing, and especially for acting as a Super House in doing all this, trying to shove this crap down our throats just as it has already shoved the ObamaCare crap down our throats. Bills are supposed to originate in the House after all, but those which do are routinely ignored by the Senate, which thinks itself superior and possessed of a priority it does not have.

The problem clearly is the US Senate and the way it is elected, how long it serves, and the way it acts. If ever it were time to repeal the 17th Amendment, this is it.

Peter Morici: Obama Threatens To Shakedown Everybody If The Rich Don't Cough It Up

Once again, Peter Morici of the University of Maryland gets it exactly right, here:

"The president, by being so persistent that it's my way or the highway, no spending cuts, taxes on folks over $250,000 or nothing, has basically put a pistol to the head of the middle class. It's threatened them with financial extortion if he doesn't get his way to satisfy the populist wing of the Democratic Party."

Translation: Obama is a gangster who threatens to take everyone's money if we don't give him rich people's money.

Somebody should call the cops.

Democrats Want To Kick The Sequestration Can To 2015

So reports Business Insider here:

On the spending side, the Democrats' offer would delay the "sequester" (automatic spending cuts) until 2015. This would cost an estimated $200 billion. But it would avoid the cuts to the military budget that the Republicans are so desperate to avoid.

If I were in charge of the ratings agencies if that passes, I would answer it with a swift rebuke and lower the credit rating again.

Equality Of Taxation Would Completely Wipe Out The First 41 Million Wage Earners

If we had anything like equality of taxation in this country, it would completely wipe out roughly the first 41 million of 151 million total wage earners. That's how bad federal spending has become.

In 2011 the first 37.4 million individual wage earners had net compensation of up to $10,000. Add in those making up to $15,000 and you get up to 49.6 million wage earners. So the 41 million mark is reached roughly somewhere between the $11,000 and $12,000 per year level of earnings.

For fiscal 2011, federal spending came to $3.6 trillion, and US population came to 313.85 million people.

If we taxed everyone equally as the US Constitution called for originally (you know, "direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers", which is one reason why we must have a census every ten years to begin with), all that federal spending in 2011 divided by all those millions of population comes to . . . wait for it . . . $11,480 per person.

So federal spending in this country is so bad that we'd have to reduce the lowest paid 41 million Americans to what amounts to slavery, to be fair, because they'd owe everything they make to the government. Everything.

"How much government is spending is the true tax", Milton Friedman once said (quoted here). And also the true tyranny.

Obama Raises Federal Pay $11 Billion Over 10 Years On Eve Of Fiscal Cliff

Now you know why Obama cut his vacation short . . . to raise spending! And rub our noses in it!

This guy is the biggest jerk ever to sit in the Oval Office, maybe excepting Lyndon Baines Johnson who reportedly pissed on the shoes of a soldier who dutifully stood at attention.

If ever anyone needed evidence that El Presidente couldn't care less about the consequences of federal spending for the fiscal situation, this is it. He's "in your face" about it, on the very eve of the biggest tax increase on the American people in living memory, and Republicans still take this guy seriously.

As reported here:

CBO [The Congressional Budget Office] says the (discretionary) cost of the .5% pay-hike the President is calling for in the Exec Order – relative to a freeze – is about $500m in FY 2013 and $11 billion over the ten years from FY 13 - FY 22.  The reason why the FY ’13 savings is only $500 million is because the pay hike as proposed by the President’s Exec Order would not go into effect until April 1st, 2013 - when the current CR [Continuing Resolution] expires. So it only covers half the fiscal year. The annualized cost of the pay hike is about $1 billion/year."

If Republicans had any imagination, they'd shut the damn government down . . . for the next two years, and teach Obama what it's like to run something. Teh.

That would save about $2 trillion of the taxpayers' money as government makes do with current revenues. The sound of the squealing pigs would be worth it.

Tax Equality Would Expose The True Horror Of Federal Spending

The true horror of federal spending in America would be understood by everyone if we actually had tax equality, by which I mean if everyone paid the same rate of taxation on all income, regardless of source.

SocialSecurity.gov reports that there were 151,380,749 people in America in 2011 with net compensation of about $6.2 trillion. However, personal income was actually more like $12.95 trillion from all sources according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This total probably was distributed to more individuals than the above referenced 151.4 million workers, but that number will be close enough to illustrate the horror I am describing.

Let us assume we tax each person earning income individually, which we do not do presently for conservative reasons, and grant to each person earning income a poverty exception to taxation of the first $11,170, which is the federal poverty guideline for a one person household in 2012. Times the 151. 4 million workers or so, this exempts $1.7 trillion from taxation, leaving $11.25 trillion of personal income in 2011 to be taxed.

In order to generate the $3.8 trillion or so we spent at the federal level in the last year, everyone earning income from whatever source would have to pay a tax rate of 33.8% on that $11.25 trillion in order to have a balanced budget for the year.

I seriously doubt the 47% who pay next to nothing in taxes would be too happy to get that tax bill, but maybe they should, if we truly want to cut government down to size.

Besides, it's only fair.

Rules For Radical Republicans: Bush Tax Cuts Edition

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

The enemy knows the Congress is a coequal branch of the government. The problem is the Republicans and the Speaker of the House do not. You actually have more power even than that. You have 30 Republican governors. Start using them.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

"New revenues from the rich" is the enemy's idea, not Republicans'.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Bush is ancient history. Time to make your own and repudiate the past. Pass something in the House which goes farther than Bush ever dreamed, and send it to the Senate to enrage the enemy.

Rule 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

The enemy is funding gold-plated union jobs and pensions for federal and state workers at the expense of middle class Americans in the private sector who enjoy neither. It's time you reminded the middle class about that.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

Use surrogates saying: Moochelle. Crony capitalist. Ideologue. Bolshevik. Dictator. Muslim sympathizer. Race baiter. Panetta flies cross country too much at taxpayer expense. The vice president thinks FDR talked to a television camera.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

Republicans can campaign, too. Go frequently to friendly territory and bring 2016 hopefuls with you.

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.

The idea of compromise became a drag a long time ago. Stop waiting for it. Go on the offensive instead.

Rule 8: Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period.

The enemy is trying to combine everything into one event, "the fiscal cliff", which tells you they perceive they are at a disadvantage. They are. You need to keep the events separate and do things piecemeal. Raising the debt ceiling should come later, crossing the tax rates fiscal cliff should come first. Fight for spending cuts later with the debt ceiling, not now. Sequestration already gave you some spending cuts, which you should embrace.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

The greatest fear of the Democrats is a debt ceiling fueled government shutdown over spending cuts, but it wasn't the end of the world under Bill Clinton, and it won't be the end of the world if it happens in 2013. You actually won that in 2011. Do it again, except bigger, to satisfy the ratings agencies. Besides, it's red meat for the base.

Rule 10: Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

No more appearances with the enemy, especially on the golf course. You are third in line for the presidency. Start acting like it. Visit Afghanistan to encourage the troops.

Rule 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

The place you need to get to is the same place you were at two times when the president extended the Bush tax rates, so you should know the way. An uncompromising new insistence on tax reform and much lower tax rates might get you there. It changes the subject and focuses the argument on relieving the taxpayers. The president upped the ante. You need to see him and raise him. Aim for the moon, and you might get into orbit.

Rule 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

You might not get the radical tax reform, about which you must be deadly serious, but settling for making the Bush tax cuts permanent is a constructive alternative.

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

Focus your attention on answering the partisanship of individuals in the pundit class. Don't fire Tea Party men. Enlist them in attacking the enemy. They are good at it, and they will repay you with support later.

Democrats Like Howard Dean Want Taxes To Go Up On Everyone

Video here.

Dean views tax increases as a necessity to avoid having to cut spending.

Democrats see no need to keep taxes or spending low.

Truman Cut Spending Big Time In 1945. The Economy Boomed.

Speaker John Boehner, wake up.

Arnold Kling, here:

When World War II ended in 1945, President Harry Truman faced a problem. Public opinion called for a rapid demobilization that would bring the boys home as soon as possible. But the Keynesians who were gaining prominence in the economics profession warned that a rapid decline in government spending and the size of the public work force would produce, in the late economist Paul Samuelson’s words, “the greatest period of unemployment and dislocation which any economy has ever faced.”

Thankfully, Truman ignored the Keynesians. Government spending plummeted by nearly two-thirds between 1945 and 1947, from $93 billion to $36.3 billion in nominal terms. If we used the “multiplier” of 1.5 for government spending that is favored by Obama administration economists, that $63.7 billion plunge should have caused GDP to fall by $95 billion, a 40 percent economic decline. In reality, GDP increased almost 10 percent during that period, from $223 billion in 1945 to $244.1 billion in 1947. This is a rare precedent of a large drop in government spending, so its economic consequences are important to understand.

Sorry Gov. Romney, We're Not Spain

Romney, last night, in another odd coincidence with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"Spain -- Spain spends 42 percent of their total economy on government. We're now spending 42 percent of our economy on government. I don't want to go down the path to Spain. I want to go down the path of growth that puts Americans to work with more money coming in because they're working."

A little dyslexia is going on here, I think. Whatever Spain's expense is as a percentage of GDP, America's is not 42, it's 24.

Here's US News and World Report, in June:

Federal spending was close to 20 percent under the Carter administration, dropped to 18 percent under Clinton, and is currently at an incredible 24 percent of GDP. According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal spending may hover around 22 percent for the next decade.

It's a little disturbing Obama didn't catch this mistake. It's a little disturbing Jim Lehrer didn't catch this mistake. In fact, I've heard the soundbite repeated on the radio this morning without anyone referring to the mistake, and that's pretty disturbing, too.

Does anyone really know what time it is?

Video Of Romney Backtracking On Tax Cuts, Threatening Your Deductions

Romney will take away your deductions and exemptions

Romney the tax simplifier, tax leveler, tax back-tracker, tax flip-flopper, uncertain tax trumpeter was on display in Ohio this week, posing himself as a clear and present danger to the tax code's many indispensable props to middle class family life, including not just the mortgage interest deduction but also for the first time "exemptions".

The last time a Republican talked this way was in 1986 when Ronald Reagan took away deductibility of credit card interest in exchange for lower overall rates.

Those rates lasted until Clinton, when they were raised. But deductibility of credit card interest? That never came back, and never will.

The same thing is going to happen to the home mortgage interest deduction, and possibly to "married filing jointly" and other such provisions of the current tax code. You'll get lower rates . . . for a while, until they have to raise them.

And then the protections of the current provisions will be absent, exposing you to the full force of increased tax rates.

The fat cats from The Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine to Rush Limbaugh, Mitt Romney, the Libertarians and the Simpson-Bowles crowd all want their greedy little hands on more revenue from the middle class . . . so they don't have to pay as much. It's just that simple.

And they are betting you are so stupid that you will vote for that!

There is nothing wrong with the current code which spending cuts cannot fix.

Story and video here.

Can We All Agree Now That Both Sides Intend To Cut The Growth Of Medicare Spending?

We once hoped Paul Ryan was a real spending cutter instead of a spending growth cutter, but is now just a defender of Medicare spending growth, or something.

In other words, you are either going to vote for a Republican Welfare State in Romney/Ryan sans ObamaCare, or a Democratic Welfare State in Obama/Biden with it, but not for a Fiscally Conservative State, and certainly not for a Limited State. 

The Investor's Business Daily doesn't seem to care that failing to cut the overall size of a program over time, adjusted for inflation, means you are not a fiscal conservative, here:

Media fact-checkers also complained about Ryan's charge that Obama is cutting $716 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare. Not true, they said. Medicare's growth is just being slowed.

But Obama achieves that slower growth by making real cuts in provider payments. And in any case, the media always and everywhere call a reduction in the rate of federal spending growth a "cut." So why suddenly charge Ryan with being misleading for using that same term?

In any case, Obama himself admitted that he's doing what Ryan says. In a November 2009 interview with ABC News, reporter Jake Tapper said to Obama that "one-third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare," to which Obama's response was: "Right."

Reducing the size of government is different than reducing how much it grows.

Plans like the Penny Plan -- if they threw out the ever-rising baseline which makes government bigger every year because spending on programs must rise to accommodate increased population -- would work in a fiscally conservative sense because they essentially freeze programs in time and lop-off 1 percent annually until revenues grow enough to balance the budget.

But in no sense can even such a plan be construed as a limited government plan because such plans do not commit to paying off the debt, which by my calculations would take $850 billion annually or so for 30 years at 3.5 percent on top of balanced budgets each and every year over the period. This is how households used to work and no longer do, which is why government no longer does.

A country is only as good as its people. If Americans will not control their own spending, the government which represents them never will.

It begins with us, not with Barack Obama or Paul Ryan.

Rep. Ryan Falls In Line: Frames Obama's Reduced Rate Of Medicare Growth As Big Cut

William Saletan for Slate mocks Paul Ryan, here:

Since Mitt Romney tapped you as his running mate, you haven’t stood for fiscal restraint. You’ve attacked it. You warned voters in North Carolina and Virginia that cuts in the defense budget would take away their tax-supported jobs. ... Four days after Romney put you on the ticket, you began parroting his Medicare shtick. You protested that Obama’s $700 billion savings in the future growth of Medicare payments to providers—a spending reduction that any sensible conservative president would have sought, and that you had previously included in your budget plan—would “lead to fewer services for seniors.” You depicted a horror scenario: “a $3,600 cut in benefits for current seniors. Nearly one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business.” You assured seniors that the Romney-Ryan agenda for Medicare “does not affect your benefits.” And you promised future retirees “guaranteed affordability” of health care. In short, you adopted every tactic in the liberal playbook. You framed a reduced rate of growth as a draconian cut. You inflated the likely impact of the reduction. You denounced any loss of services as unacceptable. You promised not to touch seniors’ benefits. And you reaffirmed a fiscally unsustainable guarantee. By my count, you’ve now done this in at least six speeches and rallies. Every day, you’re reinforcing the culture of entitlement and making it harder to rein in retirement programs.

This isn't quite right. There was no fiscal restraint in the Ryan budget to begin with. It simply returned the trajectory of the growth in spending to the status quo ante Obama, which was bad enough. This is why Ryan's budget doesn't achieve balance for decades: it supports the continued growth in spending in programs like Medicare, sans ObamaCare. Obama cuts that growth to help pay for ObamaCare. In other words, it's just business as usual with the Republicans, made to look like fiscal conservatism because it wipes away the really insane spending trajectory threatened under more of Obama.

Bait the conservatives, and switch.

Yea, shame on you, Paul Ryan.

Flashback 2008: McCain Called For Spending Freeze During Crisis. In 2012 Romney Won't.

Who is the more conservative, Mitt Romney, who has said he won't cut spending dramatically in his first year for fear of causing another recession, or John McCain, who was quite radical by current standards in calling for a freeze on spending?

September 26, 2008|Russ Britt

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Sen. John McCain proposed a possible spending freeze on virtually every federal program except the Department of Defense, for veterans and entitlement programs in a presidential debate with rival Barack Obama Friday night. Obama countered that approach is too broad-based, saying it was the equivalent of "using a hatchet where you need a scalpel."

Anybody seen the scalpel? The debt back then was $10 trillion. Now it's $15 trillion. And we're no longer AAA.

Video here.

2nd Estimate of Q2 GDP Rises to 1.7 Percent from 1.5, Q1 Still at 2.0 Percent

The news release is here.

The awful number is no longer 1.5 percent, but 1.7 percent. An annualized growth of this small magnitude is about half of the historical average up until the year 2000. In the post-WW2 period GDP averaged about 3.5 percent per annum until the turn of the century.

From 2000 to now, however, GDP growth has been far less robust, with year 2004 the lone year as high as 3.5 percent. All the rest have been lower, with some negative in the little depression of 2008 and 2009.

The pdf is here.

Has it occurred to anyone we were spending too much money taking the war to the enemy, and making war on the American people in the name of security, and subsidizing too much stuff like drugs for seniors, food stamps, and healthcare? Ratcheting up these expenditures during the last decade has coincided with a streak of terrible growth numbers.

The necessity of spending cuts has never been greater, but our politicians, of both parties, seem bent on doing anything but cut spending. Which is why AAA went away.

Both Political Parties Are Greedy Liberals Eyeing Your Tax Credits And Tax Deductions

The partisan and liberal New York Times must think we can't read out here in fly-over country. "Tax reform" is now code for "tax increase".

The drumbeat to raise your taxes continues, here, an "absolute necessity":

Both parties agree on the absolute necessity of reforming the addled, inefficient American tax code. That means eliminating much of the underbrush of credits, loopholes and expenditures and then reducing marginal tax rates. Of course, the devil is in the details. Just about every tax expenditure has a powerful interest group behind it. That is part of the reason why neither party has gotten specific about what they would put on the chopping block, and both anticipate a drawn-out fight during the tax reform process.

Marginal tax rates are much easier to raise and frequently are raised, which is why the credits and deductions have to go: as long as the deductions and credits remain they suppress revenues when taxes are inevitably raised after a "reform". That's exactly what happened in 1993 after the broadly lower rates achieved in the 1986 tax reform were swept away by Bill Clinton. The deductions sacrificed in 1986 never returned.

Liberals in both parties intend to do this to the American people again.

There's nothing wrong with the current code that spending cuts couldn't fix: especially on defense and social welfare which both have dramatically increased under Bush and Obama.

Government Payments Like Social Security/Medicare Consume 89 Percent Of Tax Revenues

The government collects only $2.66 trillion in taxes but spends $2.36 trillion just on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and the like, summed up as Personal Current Transfer Payments.

If we ran a balanced budget, that would leave just $300 billion for everything else, such as defending the country from our enemies, for which we actually spend about $700 billion currently.

Total current expenditures are running at $3.8 trillion, nearly 41 percent more than we presently take in.

On 1/1/2011 Social Security/Medicare Payments Exceeded Revenues By $329 Billion

Social insurance revenues were $906 billion on 1/1/11, but outlays for Social Security were $703 billion and for Medicare $532 billion on that date, meaning the programs were not self-sustaining, running a deficit of $329 billion.

Peter Schiff Warns About Rising Interest Rates But Avoids The Sorry Truth

Peter Schiff, here:

The current national debt is about $16 trillion (this is just the funded portion...the unfunded liabilities of the Treasury are much, much larger). The only reason the United States is able to service this staggering level of debt is that the currently low interest rate on government debt (now below 2 per cent) keeps debt service payments to a relatively manageable $300 billion per year.

First of all, interest payments on the debt haven't been close to $300 billion a year since 1994. They've been above that level ever since 1994, and frequently way above that level.

In fact, interest payments on the debt have been above $400 billion each year from 2006 inclusive, except for 2009. This is important in the context of a Republican House which congratulates itself endlessly for a one-time spending cut of $38 billion.

Secondly, if we were really paying an effective 2 percent interest rate to service the debt, say in 2011, our interest payment that year would have been closer to $296 billion.

But the total US public debt at the end of the 2011 fiscal year reached almost $14.8 trillion, and interest payments on that debt were actually $454 billion, implying an interest rate in excess of 3 percent, half again as high.

That's the real lesson of rising interest rates. A 50 percent rise in interest rates from 2 percent to 3 on a pile of debt that size means an increased interest expense of $158 billion. People who think rates can't rise that much very quickly haven't been paying attention to the recent experiences of Greece, Spain and Italy. For example in Spain interest rates paid on 10yr paper lept 50 percent in six months' time this year.

In Italy they lept over 35 percent in five months' time.

Third, while Peter Schiff is surely right when he warns that rising interest rates threaten to consume government revenues, leaving nothing for essential services, the sorry truth is that our interest payments on the public debt are really more like the interest-only payments on loans people took out during the housing bubble. Those loans were DESIGNED never to require principal payments, and so the buyers of those homes never built any real equity and never were on a path to retiring those debts. That's our federal government. We NEVER make principal payments on the money we borrow, and we effectively borrow the money we need to make the interest payments, and then some.

Instead of paying $454 billion a year in interest-only payments on the national debt, we should be on a path to retiring that debt. At 3.5 percent interest for 30 years, that would mean interest AND principal payments together totaling $864 billion a year, not $454 billion. And it would also mean: NO MORE BORROWING.

Can you imagine such an America? Of $2.8 trillion in current revenues, that would leave just $1.9 trillion for the feds to spend, 50 percent less than the $3.8 trillion and climbing which they spend now.

If there were any real conservatives in America, let alone in the Republican Party, that's what they'd be telling the American people. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just a pretender.