"two-year suspension of the debt ceiling expired at the end of July"

Pure gobbledygook.

The limit, a facet of American politics for over a century, prevents the Treasury from issuing new bonds to fund government activities once a certain debt level is reached. That level reached $22 trillion in August 2019 and was suspended until Saturday. 

The new debt limit will include Washington’s additional borrowing since summer 2019. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that the new cap will likely come in just north of $28.5 trillion.

More gobbledygook.

The government's bookkeeping shenanigans here are always amazing, but especially now given the orgy of spending during the pandemic, and the reporting is nearly as bad.

The debt ceiling was "set" at $22 trillion in August 2019, but it wasn't "reached" until April 2021.

Add in the ever present "intragovernmental" borrowings and the total debt is now $28.46 trillion at the end of July. Intragovernmental holdings is code for raiding the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds. It's one of the weird things about how bureaucrats think that the extent to which they must raid those funds plus the "normal" public debt becomes the sum they'll use to set the new "public" portion, the debt ceiling, when Congress gets around to it.

They all should be in jail. Instead we are.

America was an extremist country until 1913

So says this nut, Adam Grossman:

As a Libertarian, some of [Harry] Browne’s economic proposals were extreme—including, for instance, abolishing income taxes. 

Well now, since the total public debt is today $23.076 trillion and climbing inexorably, I'd say the extremism is all post-1913. Measured in trillions, the public debt in 1913 was less than $0.00 trillion. 

Isn't it obvious that income taxes have become irrelevant?

We spend in deficit every year and simply keep adding to the total owed. Might as well just stop collecting income taxes altogether, since we've decided we can borrow indefinitely. We never pay as we go, let alone make payments on what we owe.

Why are taxes even necessary anymore, since nothing has ever had to be paid for, or paid off?

Income taxes are dispensable.   

Trump and Republicans make total public debt soar

We've gone from $19.8 trillion in the hole on Nov 8, 2016 to $22 trillion on Feb 14, 2019.

Up $2.2 trillion!

Up 11%!

Up $81.5 billion per month!

Up $2.7 billion per day!

MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!

Sum Ting Wong: Low top marginal tax rates since 1986 have NOT delivered

Low top marginal tax rates have NOT delivered since 1986.

The average top marginal rate has been 38% for the last thirty years, 49% lower than the average rate of 75% which prevailed from 1956 until the Reagan tax reform of 1986.

After the reform, stocks have done little better than before, but gross public debt has increased at a rate 21% higher than before, growth of current dollar GDP has plunged by 66%, and growth of household net worth has slowed by 48%.

Where did the gains from the Reagan tax cuts go?

You know the answer. The number of US billionaires has exploded from just 41 in 1987 to 536 in 2015, up 1,207%. The money has gone into the pockets of the few, instead of into investment. From 1960 to 1986 net domestic investment grew 846% whereas in the 30 years since 1986 the metric has grown by only 117%, a contraction of 86% under the more favorable personal income tax regime.

The lesson seems clear.

Higher marginal income tax rates force the wealthy to invest in business and derive their income from investments taxed at the preferred lower long term capital rates. Lower marginal personal income tax rates, however, entice them away from going through all the trouble, in turn depriving the economy of growth, employees of growing incomes and wealth, and the government of revenue.

Like the formerly sound public policy which invented the 30-year mortgage to force people to save for the future in the housing piggy bank, the time has come to reincentivize business owners to invest more in their businesses by making the personal income option less attractive.

Neither Republican tax bill does this. 

  

Jack Lew, who presided over an 87% increase in the national debt as Treasury Secretary, is suddenly worried about the debt implications of tax reform

From the election of Obama in 2008 until the election of Trump in 2016, $9.2 trillion were added to the total public debt. We've gone from $10.6 trillion in the hole to $19.8 trillion over the period.

Yet now we hear from Jack Lew in The New York Times here that

"digging a deep hole of debt by cutting taxes will make it harder to pay for other priorities. And when that debt makes deficits skyrocket in the future, policy makers would have to choose between raising taxes and cutting investments and vital benefits. ... Some Republican policy makers suggest they may reject mainstream approaches and assume positive economic effects that go far beyond those normally projected by the budget office and the tax committee. ... Such a reckless move would almost surely produce an explosion of debt."

Actually, the Obama Administration dug a deep hole of debt right off the bat by spending money it didn't have, tacking on $600 billion of spending to Bush's last fiscal year, and then regularizing the increase by avoiding the budget process in favor of continuing resolutions, the Congress' new bipartisan method of fleecing the American people. Deficits skyrocketed contemporaneously, and then Democrat policy makers recklessly passed Obamacare with its spendthrift Medicaid expansion. They didn't have to choose between anything.

The only people more full of horseshit than the Republicans are the Democrat engineers of the Obama economic catastrophe.

Just another day at the office: Mitch McConnell lets Donald Trump know what's what

Don't get into a pissing match with the Senate Majority Leader, if you know what's good for you.

Quoted here:

“I think this level of national debt is dangerous and unacceptable,” McConnell said, adding he hopes Congress doesn’t lose sight of that when it acts next year. “My preference on tax reform is that it be revenue neutral,” he said.

What a hypocritical gasbag Rush Limbaugh is about Trump's spending plans

Why, Donald Trump could be another FDR!, he says today. He could consolidate Republican rule for decades if he spends the money correctly!

Rush doesn't have a clue about the Obama stimulus, let alone have any principles. He thinks the stimulus was $1 trillion or so, when it was actually nearly $5 trillion, so far. I say so far because the damn thing was built into the outlay train. And look what we've gotten for it. A big fat nothing-burger. Crummier economic growth than under Bush, full-time jobs over 6 million behind trend, and a big fat national debt of nearly $20 trillion.

But Trump's version is going to be successful! Sure it is. $1 trillion or $5 trillion or $10 trillion under Trump isn't going to do anything it couldn't do under Obama.

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending, and to every frickin' year thereafter. The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion.

And here are the annual outlays thereafter in excess of that baseline:

2009: $535.2 billion

2010: $474.6 billion

2011: $620.6 billion

2012: $554.5 billion

2013: $472.1 billion

2014: $523.6 billion

2015: $776.1 billion

2016: $1.017 trillion.

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president.

And now that Trump is running the show, an even bigger joke is about to be played on the American people.

Hillary present at the debacles: Housing bubble, Great Recession, Iraq War, Surrender to Iran, Doubling of the Debt, puny GDP . . .

Conrad Black, here:

Hillary Clinton, though she would probably be an improvement on the recent past, represents continuity of what has been the most catastrophic 20 years of misgovernment in American history. She was there, as first lady, senator, secretary of state, or candidate, for the housing bubble and Great Recession, the terrible drain of Middle East war that delivered most of Iraq to Iran and produced a colossal humanitarian tragedy, the doubling of the national debt in seven years to produce one per cent annual economic growth while 15 million people dropped out of the work force, and the terrible fiascoes of the abandoned red line in Syria and the cave-in to Iranian nuclear military ambitions with a fig leaf of (unverifiable) deferral. But she is an able person, still carrying the torch of feminism, and she isn’t Trump.

The total public debt is now up $457 billion in just four days

Debt ceiling follies: The total public debt hit $18.152 trillion in mid March, but somehow the Treasury Dept. kept paying the bills for eight months without defaulting

March 2015

November 2015

The New York Times criticizes Republican tax plans, pretending revenues are needed to cover spending

Here:

"All of these candidates deny fiscal reality. In the next 10 years, revenues will need to increase by 40 percent simply to keep federal spending even, per capita, with inflation and population growth. Additional revenues will be needed to pay for health care for the elderly, transportation systems and other obligations, as well as for newer challenges, including climate change. And interest on the national debt will surely rise because interest rates have nowhere to go but up."

Who is the Times trying to kid?

Revenues have never been needed to cover expenditures and they know it, and rarely have covered expenditures. Expenditures will continue to grow whether the Times or the Republicans like it or not. They are baked into the cake of the legislation that drives them. The only way to fix that is to rescind the legislation or modify it, with its built-in cost of living increases and added population coverage assumptions.

This country has run minor annual surpluses in just twelve years since 1939, doing nothing but slowing down our present arrival at $18.2 trillion in debt.

Spare us the histrionics.

The heavy hitters when it comes to spending are:

• HHS ($1 trillion, 91% of which is Medicare and Medicaid)
• Social Security ($.96 trillion)
• Defense ($.59 trillion, protecting the world without reimbursement)
• Treasury Dept. ($.57 trillion, $.4 trillion of which is interest on the debt overspending)
• Veterans ($.16 trillion, which does such a good job veterans die waiting for appointments)
• Agriculture ($.14 trillion, over half of which is the food stamp program).

Together those six account for 88% of federal spending, and the Times dares the Republicans even to think about reforming Social Security and Medicare, calling instead for higher taxes.

Meanwhile there's plenty else to cut just by axing all the other departments which account for the remaining $.48 trillion making up the 2015 fiscal outlay total of $3.9 trillion.

Let's start with the Education Dept., $76 billion, then International Assistance Programs, $22 billion.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching! You're 20% of the way there, just like that.

See how easy that was?

Paying off the $18.1 trillion national debt in 30 years . . .

Financed at 3.5%, it would require annual payments of $977.4 billion to retire the $18.1 trillion national debt in 30 years.

This assumes deficit spending (projected to average $512 billion annually, already factoring in increasing revenues going forward to 2020) would cease in order to balance the books and cap the debt.

Together debt repayments and cessation of deficit spending imply cutting current allocations by a total of $1.5 trillion annually, leaving just $1.7 trillion to fund government outlays in fiscal 2015 projected to soar to $3.8 trillion.

Out of control and misplaced spending therefore amounts to 55% of projected outlays in fiscal 2015, or $2.1 trillion.

In the already low GDP environment, a 55% fiscal contraction is utterly unthinkable to anyone in either political party, the equivalent of an 8.5% hit to the current dollar GDP at $17.69 trillion.

The revenue projection for fiscal 2015 is just $3.2 trillion, but will be the highest ever.

Average annual federal deficit projection 2015-2020

$512 billion, which will add $3.07 trillion to the national debt in six years.

Obama has added $6.3 trillion to the national debt 2009-2014, $1.05 trillion per year, with plenty of help from Republicans since 2010.

How massive government debt remains the biggest impediment to growth

Nominal GDP increased $604.9 billion dollars in 2013. The interest payment on the debt for fiscal 2013 was $415.7 billion, consuming almost 69% of GDP.

So far in 2014 nominal GDP is up $787.1 billion. The interest payment on the debt for fiscal 2014 just ended on September 30th was $430.8 billion, consuming almost 55% of GDP to date. At least that trend is in the right direction.

Interest payments on government bonds do not count as government spending in the category of consumption expenditures because they are not related to production as they are in business.

Interest expense has exceeded $400 billion in seven out of the last nine fiscal years.

The national debt stood at $17.824 trillion on September 30, 2014. The fiscal year interest expense of $430.8 billion therefore represents an interest rate on the debt of 2.42%. The 10-year Treasury currently pays 2.31%.

Now you may understand the Federal Reserve's Zero Interest Rate Policy, and its never-ending message to Congress pleading for fiscal restraint. Interest rates cannot be repressed forever without social unrest. Democrats need reminding that such restraint involves spending, while Republicans need reminding that it involves both spending restraint and necessary taxation. They could make a start by recognizing that income inequality begins by treating some money more equally than other money.

It's a waste of time asking Democrats for prudent anything, which is why Republicans now run the show again. We'll see if the Republicans got the message this time. As always, past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

Jonathan Gruber exposed in a sixth video, touting how he deliberately designed ObamaCare to mislead

Jake Tapper for CNN here:

In previously posted but only recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an "exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter," taking advantage of voters' "stupidity" to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.

The issue at hand in this sixth video is known as the "Cadillac tax," which was represented as a tax on employers' expensive health insurance plans. While employers do not currently have to pay taxes on health insurance plans they provide employees, starting in 2018, companies that provide health insurance that costs more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family will have to pay a 40 percent tax. ...

"It turns out politically it's really hard to get rid of," Gruber said. "And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it's a tax on people who hold those insurance plans." ...

The second way was have the tax kick in "late, starting in 2018. But by starting it late, we were able to tie the cap for Cadillac Tax to CPI, not medical inflation," Gruber said. CPI is the consumer price index, which is lower than medical inflation.

Gruber explains that by drafting the bill this way, they were able to pass something that would initially only impact some employer plans though it would eventually hit almost every employer plan. And by that time, those who object to the tax will be obligated to figure out how to come up with the money that repealing the tax will take from the treasury, or risk significantly adding to the national debt.

GDP less interest payments on the debt 2006-2012 is net positive $44.1 billion, that's all

Nominal GDP, not seasonally adjusted, for the seven years 2006-2012 totals $2,941.8 billion.

Nominal interest payments on the debt for all the same fiscal years totals $2,897.7 billion.

And people wonder why we're not growing when all we've got is a measly $44.1 billion to show for it.

Interest payments on the massive debt of $17,609 billion are gobbling up economic growth.

Think of it this way. The seven year average interest payment on the debt, $414 billion annually, represents a simple interest rate of 2.35% on today's balance. That's what the economic growth rate should look like. Instead, last quarter it was -2.9%, down almost $74 billion seasonally adjusted, and negative $118 billion real.

The huge public debt is the drag on the economy, and would be the knee on the chest of the heart attack victim if the Federal Reserve didn't suppress interest rates the way it is doing. 

Social Conservatives Save, Liberals Just Go Into Debt

Social conservatives tax themselves (it's called saving for retirement, now $21.9 trillion saved), liberals tax everyone but never save anything (it's called the Total Public Debt, now $17.3 trillion owed).

Global Public Debt Is Up 72% Since 2007, Just Six Years Ago

Vindictive CNSNews.com blames Speaker Boehner for $3 trillion jump in total public debt

Here:

Thus, all spending and borrowing by the federal government are the de facto and de jure—n.b. constitutional—responsibility of the House of Representatives that John Boehner leads.

Well, yeah, and the Bible says "Judas went and hanged himself" and "go and do thou likewise".

The author of the posting, Terence Jeffrey, never once places the spending and borrowing in their broader historical context of the economic depression which ensued in 2007, long before John Boehner took the reigns as Speaker of the House in 2011.

Never once does Mr. Jeffrey mention the revenue side, which dried up like an old prune in consequence of the panic which saw home prices crash and a record 29.5 million people file first time claims for unemployment in 2009. Nor does he bother to mention the deliberate, bi-partisan decision taken to reduce revenues to relieve the American people in this situation by temporarily cutting their Social Security taxes by 33% for back to back years in 2011 and 2012 when nothing else seemed to be working to revivify the economy. Revenues constrained by declining tax receipts due to depression-like conditions all over the economy coupled with these tax cuts, after peaking in fiscal 2007 at $2.568 trillion, for the next five fiscal years never once got above that level after reaching their low in 2009 at $2.105 trillion. What did Mr. Jeffrey expect to happen given that, the debt to decline?

One suspects Mr. Jeffrey isn't interested, however, in any of the facts and their context, only in slamming John Boehner. Otherwise he'd have mentioned them, and that Boehner's predecessor Democrat Nancy Pelosi increased the debt at a rate 63% faster in 2009 and 2010 than Boehner has in his nearly three years as Speaker.

Really bad form, old boy.

Total Public Debt Owed Jumps $328 Billion After Debt Ceiling Extended

click to enlarge