Michael Ramirez for February 08, 2015

Winning the Powerball lottery will help cut that down.

Part of the problem is the Republicans offer no credible solutions. All they want to do is cut budgets in places that will only affect the middle class. You don’t see them revising the tax code to get rid of all their special interest tax breaks or creating a more reasonable defense department budget. Income inequality is clearly the elephant in the room. Certainly the present trend cannot continue or it won’t be long before the top one percent controls 99 percent of all the wealth. We need to recreate the American dream so the middle class once again has a fighting chance. We don’t need any more Koch brothers or Donald Trump’s.

Calling public debt different than private debt is a distinction without a difference. There is no way for the government to reduce debt other than by taking currency from the private sector. But this is a red herring. Nobody is going back far enough to the real problem: we use debt as money. It is Ponzi scheme of such magnitude you cannot even allow yourself to see the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0

When we have a Democratic president to veto tax cuts and a Republican congress to cut spending (as during most of the Clinton years), the budget deficit reduces. This is a good thing for future generations. The last thing we should do is throw more government goodies to the baby boomers, this selfish generation (of which I am ashamedly part of) is responsible for all of the accumulated debt we have so far.

This whole Republican mantra of "Oh the Debt!The total worth of the federal government is at least some 10 times the $20 trillion of the debt (of which a substantial part is actually eaily forgivable as it is actually already owed to governmental departments anyway. One with more than $3 trillion is social security, which has never needed more than the interest at best to continue its bene fit payments at current levels

We must trust the wise one, Cheney, when he said “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” or is that only if you’re a republican?

The deficits run by the latest two Democratic presidents pale in comparison to the deficits run by the last two Republican presidents. Let’s at least get the facts straight. Look it up.

Listening to the Republican House folks response to President Obama’s PROPOSED budget, they’re already going to wring all the good out, meaning money, into the cups of the 1% in corporate and private coffers, and the rest of us will get that rag left in our saucers.

IMO the term “federal budget” is the worst oxymoron ever used by people elected on other people’s money that assume they have been given not the “key to the city of D.C.” but the Key to the US Treasury.-As was predicted by a wise person (I forget the name) when the People realize they can Vote themselves money from the Public Till, that is the beginning of the downfall of a nation.-Justice would require most of our leaders should be in orange jumpsuits surrounded by metal fences.

I have to wonder if some folks went to school in the U.S. The HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES initiates ALL tax & spending bills. They are the responsible folks.

Remember how during the last administration…“Deficits don’t matter”.Yea, good times.

I love how many Republicans act so concerned over the by the deficit and mounting debt when they didn’t give a damn about it during the Bush Administration. The facts are that during the last 30 years, the budget deficit increased during a Republican administration and decreased during a Democratic administration. The facts are that Republicans in Congress tack on pork barrel spending riders on to bills to bring some of that wasted tax dollars back to their districts. The facts are that Republicans add on to department budget requests to benefit companies in their state.Are Republicans alone in doing this? No, but that’s not the point. My point is that if Republicans actually cared about debt and deficit spending any where near what they claim to, they wouldn’t be wasting tax payer money on pork barrel spending. They do engage in it, so that shows that they just don’t care. They just want to bitch about it for as long as a Democrat is in the White House. It’s partisan politics at it’s finest.

It was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who wrote the book the Pres is holding.

From the left, I would be happier if the debt were lower. How to get it lower? Higher taxes on the very wealthy would help a little, but not really all that much. Much better would be a humming economy. How to get the economy humming? Well, things are improving, and the US is actually doing better than most other industrialized countries. I’m a believer in Biblical economics — when the economy is good, build up a surplus, when the economy is bad, spend the surplus you built up in the the good times. Unfortunately, when the great recession hit, the US was already too deep in debt. But I’m not convinced that austerity would have been a good response to the great recession.But as I have said before, I don’t think the kind of economy we have now is sustainable in the long run for environmental reasons.

Why should Democrats care about deficit spending when Republicans don’t? Republicans add just as many pork barrel spending riders onto bills as Democrats and add billions of dollars to the military budget to purchase weapons systems the military didn’t even want.When it comes to deficit spending, the sole difference between Democrats and Republicans is Republicans pretend to care about it for show when a Democrat is President. They’re porking out in the same tax dollar trough as Democrats, but they complain about it as if they’re not part of the problem. When a Republican is President, Republicans don’t even put on the pretense of caring about the budget deficit.The Republicans’ entire “fiscal responsibility” dog and pony show is little more than a farce for the unwashed masses who actually believe them.

Your comments are indeed shovel ready stimulus

Yes, because no right thinking person could possibly disagree with your revealed wisdom. The only conceivable answer is that they are evil monsters who hate their children..Sheesh

I freely admit that I’m not an economist. But I am not convinced that the comparison of household debt to government debt makes sense.Here’s Paul Krugman in today’s NYT:Nobody Understands DebtMany economists, including Janet Yellen, view global economic troubles since 2008 largely as a story about “deleveraging” — a simultaneous attempt by debtors almost everywhere to reduce their liabilities. Why is deleveraging a problem? Because my spending is your income, and your spending is my income, so if everyone slashes spending at the same time, incomes go down around the world.Or as Ms. Yellen put it in 2009, “Precautions that may be smart for individuals and firms — and indeed essential to return the economy to a normal state — nevertheless magnify the distress of the economy as a whole.”So how much progress have we made in returning the economy to that “normal state”? None at all. You see, policy makers have been basing their actions on a false view of what debt is all about, and their attempts to reduce the problem have actually made it worse.…European leaders completely bought into the notion that the economic crisis was brought on by too much spending, by nations living beyond their means. The way forward, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany insisted, was a return to frugality. Europe, she declared, should emulate the famously thrifty Swabian housewife.This was a prescription for slow-motion disaster. European debtors did, in fact, need to tighten their belts — but the austerity they were actually forced to impose was incredibly savage. Meanwhile, Germany and other core economies — which needed to spend more, to offset belt-tightening in the periphery — also tried to spend less. The result was to create an environment in which reducing debt ratios was impossible: Real growth slowed to a crawl, inflation fell to almost nothing and outright deflation has taken hold in the worst-hit nations.Suffering voters put up with this policy disaster for a remarkably long time, believing in the promises of the elite that they would soon see their sacrifices rewarded. But as the pain went on and on, with no visible progress, radicalization was inevitable. Anyone surprised by the left’s victory in Greece, or the surge of anti-establishment forces in Spain, hasn’t been paying attention.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/paul-krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?emc=edit_th_20150209&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=17756263&_r=0

Yes that’s it! When the facts never support the liberal view, just dismiss it & call those that disagree with you names!

Thanks for a very informative post.