Both major political parties are working together to destroy America’s financial future, and most Americans don’t seem to care. Once upon a time, the Republicans were considered to be “the party of fiscal responsibility”, but now they are just as bad as the “free spending” Democrats. As you will see below, a “compromise” budget deal was just reached which will dramatically increase federal spending and will suspend the federal debt limit until after the next election. In other words, both sides are conspiring to make our debt problem much, much worse over the next year and a half, and this should be causing howls of outrage all across America. But instead most Americans seem content to go along with the free spending ways of our political leaders, and only a handful of voices are sounding the alarm as we steamroll toward financial oblivion.
When Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20th, 2009, the U.S. national debt was sitting at a grand total of $10,626,877,048,913.08.
Of course we proceeded to go on the greatest debt binge in the history of our nation, and when Obama’s two terms ended the U.S. national debt had risen to $19,947,304,555,212.49.
Then Donald Trump took office, and we have continued to rack up debt at a staggering pace. In fact, at this moment the U.S. national debt is $22,023,119,533,123.43.
So over the last 10 and a half years, we have added just under 11.4 trillion dollars to our mountain of debt. And when you break that down, that means that our politicians have been stealing more than 100 million dollars every single hour of every single day from future generations of Americans during the Trump/Obama era.
Unfortunately, things are about to get a lot worse. It is being projected that “non-discretionary spending” will dramatically rise as Baby Boomers retire in unprecedented numbers this decade, and as a result our national debt will hit 30 trillion dollars not too long from now. The following comes from a recent Forbes article…
By the end of 2020, it will be approaching $25 trillion. And that doesn’t include state and local debt of $3 trillion plus their $6-trillion unfunded pension liabilities.Note that all that is without a recession.The unified deficit will easily hit $2 trillion and approach $2.5 trillion in the next recession. Within 2 to 3 years later, the total US debt will be at least $30 trillion.
This debt is an existential threat to our republic, and even without all of our other very serious problems it would be enough to bring us down all by itself.
But instead of trying to do something about it, our politicians just reached a “compromise” agreement that will dramatically increase spending…
US President Donald Trump said Monday that a “compromise” bipartisan budget agreement has been reached that will boost federal spending by $320 billion and suspend the debt limit beyond the next presidential election.The deal, should it pass Congress as expected, would allow the federal government to borrow more money and avoid a disastrous default in the coming months, while significantly raising budget caps on defense and domestic outlays.
I don’t know if I even have the words to describe how disgusted I am by all of this.
Of course swamp creatures such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are simply thrilled about what just went down…
“I am very encouraged that the administration and Speaker Pelosi have reached a two-year funding agreement that secures the resources we need to keep rebuilding our armed forces,” McConnell, R-Ky., said. “This was our top objective: Continuing to restore the readiness of our armed forces and modernize our military to deter and defend against growing threats to our national security. That includes investing in our facilities here at home, like Ft. Knox, Ft. Campbell, and the Blue Grass Army Depot, which my state of Kentucky is proud to host.”
He doesn’t seem the least bit ashamed of what he is doing to America.
There is no way that we are going to come back from a 30 trillion dollar debt. It is the largest debt that any government has ever accumulated in the history of the world, and it threatens to destroy the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.
Thankfully, there are a few voices that are still brave enough to speak up. One of them is Maya MacGuineas…
“This agreement is a total abdication of fiscal responsibility by Congress and the president,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington advocacy group. “It may end up being the worst budget agreement in our nation’s history, proposed at a time when our fiscal conditions are already precarious.”
And after news of this budget deal broke, U.S. Representative Mark Walker posted an image of the Joker burning a huge pile of money…
In response, North Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Walker tweeted out a picture of the Joker lighting a pile of money on fire, from the 2008 “Batman” film “The Dark Knight.” (“All you care about is money,” the Joker laments to a hardened career criminal as the money burns. “This town deserves a better class of criminal. And I’m going to give it to them.”)
I really wish that we could be optimistic that things will change in the future, but if the Republicans and the Democrats both don’t care about our exploding national debt there truly is no hope, because we don’t have any other viable political options. I made the national debt one of my core issues when I ran for Congress, but unfortunately the big Washington PACs came in with a ton of outside money and made sure that one of my opponents won.
Sadly, it isn’t just the U.S. that is drowning in debt. According to the latest numbers, the total amount of debt in the world has hit a grand total of 246 trillion dollars…
According to the latest IIF Global Debt Monitor released today, debt around the globe hit $246 trillion in Q1 2019, rising by $3 trillion in the quarter, and outpacing the rate of growth of the global economy as total debt/GDP rose to 320%
All of that debt can never be paid off under our current system.
In the end, the only thing that can be done is to keep increasing the size of the bubble until it inevitably bursts and the entire global economic system goes down in flames.
The borrower is the servant of the lender, and debt is being used to literally enslave the entire planet.
Humanity desperately needs to wake up, but right now there are not nearly enough people that are educating people about these matters.
About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dreamand The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.
UPDATE:
From here:
So much for party of small government.
Enough Republicans join Democrats to pass $2.7T spending bill
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday approved a $2.7 trillion spending agreement negotiated between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House, sending the deal to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
The bill passed 67-28. It was approved with more Democratic votes than Republican, a potential embarrassment for the White House in the GOP-controlled chamber.
GOP leaders and the president were lobbying Senate Republicans this week to support the plan, hoping to soften the optics of a Pelosi-White House-negotiated bill passing on Democratic votes.
“He’s been involved, yes,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate GOP whip, said of Trump’s role in the last-minute lobbying.
An hour before the vote, Trump tweeted another endorsement of the plan, calling it “phenomenal for our Great Military, our Vets, and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! Two year deal gets us past the Election.”
And in a nod to the biggest GOP critique of the plan — that it doesn’t do enough to limit spending — Trump said there would be an opportunity to do so later.
“Go for it Republicans, there is always plenty of time to CUT!” he added.
“We need to support the president on this,” said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, one of the GOP senators who said Wednesday that he would support the plan. The White House and congressional “leadership has done the best they can to come up with an agreeable solution in divided government.”
The plan would raise the nation’s debt ceiling through 2021 as well as raise caps on federal spending for the next two years. Lawmakers would still have to enact additional legislation to determine how and where the money would be spent.
But many Republicans voiced opposition to the plan for lifting the spending caps, resulting in $320 billion more spending, with only $77 billion in cuts. In the past, some GOP lawmakers have also opposed raising the debt ceiling without cuts.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., dubbed the bill’s passage as the “final nail in the coffin” of the tea party movement and fiscal responsibility.
“Adoption of this deal marks the death of the tea party,” he said on the Senate floor. “Where are the fiscal conservatives? What happened to the tea party movement?”
Republicans were torn between supporting a White House-approved plan that eliminated caps on defense spending — a significant GOP priority — and supporting a Pelosi-approved plan that would raise the debt limit and result in new spending for domestic programs.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tried to frame the deal as the best compromise possible in a divided government. And he stressed the importance of avoiding the “chaos” that would come if the government defaulted on its debts.
“I am confident it is not exactly the legislation that either side of the aisle would have written if one party held the White House, the House, and had 60 votes in the Senate. That’s divided government,” he said on the Senate floor this week. “But I am equally confident that this is a deal that every one of my colleagues should support.”
House Republicans weren’t wild about the plan, either. The spending agreement was approved in that chamber last week in a 284-149 vote, with 219 Democrats and 65 Republicans.
— Jennifer Haberkorn
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
No comments:
Post a Comment