>> "41% of the government's cash flow is borrowed money." <<
Rep. Rigell seems to have it as much as 180 degrees off. Cash flow is net cash coming in over a period of time, in this case one fiscal year.
I think you got close to violating this thread's header rules with your dunce comment.
If "the government's cash flow" is what we spent/spend, we're in great shape and heading in the right direction. <g>
The politifact.com article missed that a FY change in national debt does not equal a FY measure of deficit (or surplus). Rep. Rigell didn't measure it right. In an example on Wikipedia for FY2008, "the national debt increased by $1,017 billion, much more than the $455 billion deficit figure."
I'd like to know how he considered and how he treated TARP repayments. That was over $600 billion, some received in FY 2010. How did he treat GM shares, AIG shares, and other assets? Did he ignore all of these?
I am sure unclewest exaggerated when he wrote "the United States pisses its borrowings away." Again, there's a timing issue, and a direction issue. We don't throw away our debt obligations, and even if he meant the recipients of the debt proceeds, that's a diverse group including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and a wide swath of corporate America.
Then, I quibble with the math. It's a distortion to count the borrowings in the denominator when you are trying to measure and compare deficits. The clearer way to do it is as a percentage of revenue. As examples, if you have revenue of 100 and expenses of 120, you have a "deficit" of 20/100 or 20%, not 20/120 or 16.7% as Rep. Rigell presents it. |
