When $8.18 Trillion Isn't Enough
Yesterday, Treasury officials told Senate aides that without an increase in the nation's $8.18 trillion debt limit, the government "would default on obligations for the first time in history sometime during the week of March 20." The Senate will have to take up the issue soon since "federal default is considered unimaginable because it would rattle bond markets, force interest rates higher and shake the economy." The debt limit increase to around $9 trillion would be the fourth increase in five years. "I don't think the leadership wants to have any debate on this, and I think the reason is pretty clear," Finance Committee ranking member Max Baucus (D-MT) told CongressDaily. "It's embarrassing." To avoid an extended debate, the leadership is set to vote on the issue as close to the March 17 recess as possible. Finance Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has admitted he wants the debt limit increased "with the least debate" possible. "I would like to see a bill on any Thursday night just prior to a recess," he said. The New York Times warned the Senate bill may "be put to a voice vote, so that no individual would have to go on record as approving the measure. The American people deserve better."
DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO: "The American dream begins with saving money and that should begin on the very first day of work," Vice President Cheney said yesterday. "Yet a lot of American families live paycheck to paycheck...and this underscores one of our fundamental obligations in Washington: to be good stewards of the taxpayer's dollar." But as Bloomberg columnist John M. Berry said, "The reality is that taxes and spending are badly out of whack, and hardly anyone - certainly neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Richard Cheney - wants to admit it." Cheney, after all, once claimed, "Deficits don't matter." The $5.6 trillion projected ten year surplus, accumulated as part of what American Progress Senior Fellow Gene Sperling describes as "the rainy day savings of the 1990s," is gone. "The outlook for the federal budget over the next decade continues to be bright," the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) wrote in January 2001. "Such large surpluses would be sufficient by 2006 to pay off all debt held by the public that will be available for redemption." The current national debt stands at $8,269,768,312,946.41. |
