Debt Ceiling

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EXPLAINER: How ominous is the debt limit problem?

WASHINGTON (AP) — On the brink of hitting the nation’s legal borrowing limit on Thursday, the government is resorting to “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-us-department-of-the-treasury-united-states-government-janet-yellen-business-6fe9b54dcdfea58bead0f4c5f9f89a64?

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US Treasury buys time for Biden and GOP on debt limit deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government bumped up against its debt limit Thursday, prompting the Treasury Department to take “extraordinary” accounting steps to avoid default — as friction between President Joe Biden and House Republicans raised concern about whether the U.S. can sidestep an economic crisis.

https://apnews.com/article/us-debt-limit-political-friction-3652d50a1567c1e7ab544614b7f2b357?

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The AP Interview: Yellen says debt standoff risks ‘calamity’

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an Associated Press interview Saturday she expects Congress will ultimately vote to raise America’s debt limit, but demands by House Republicans for spending cuts in return for backing an increase are “a very irresponsible thing to do” and risk creating a “self-imposed calamity” for the global economy.

https://apnews.com/article/politics-us-department-of-the-treasury-united-states-government-district-columbia-china-0f7f0d85ed38353940a18cd262de8b09

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White House to McCarthy: No negotiations on debt limit

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Joe Biden “looks forward” to sitting down with new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to discuss a range of topics, including perhaps the thorniest challenge confronting Washington this year: raising the nation’s debt limit.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-united-states-government-district-of-columbia-kevin-mccarthy-e59d479a21811e6dbe5557b3cff11d6d

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Was Nearly 25% of the US National Debt Incurred During Trump Administration?

On Jan. 17, 2023, newly elected U.S. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy tweeted that "House Republicans" were "on a mission to end wasteful Washington spending." In response to that tweet, former U.S Representative from Florida and current MSNBC contributor David Jolly, tweeted, "for context," that "roughly 25% of our total national debt incurred over the last 230 years actually occurred during the 4 years of the Trump administration."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-debt-25-percent/?

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A political fight is again putting the economy at risk.

The Treasury Department will use “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to pay its bills.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Routine crisis

The U.S. government hit the legal limit on how much money it can borrow yesterday, prompting fears that the country soon may not be able to pay its bills.

The fight over the debt limit, which is now more than $31 trillion, can sound technical, but it could affect everyone. If the U.S. defaults on its debts, it could shatter financial markets. Your 401(k) and other investments could follow. As the flow of money dries up, businesses could be forced to close or downsize, taking jobs with them.

“While no one really knows what would happen if you breach the debt limit, not many people would speculate that good stuff happens after that,” Christopher Campbell, a former Treasury official, told my colleagues Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport. “It’s a cascade of how bad it gets.”

It’s a grim scenario — one the country has flirted with repeatedly since the 1990s.

The good news: The government has time to act. Analysts estimate that the Treasury Department can use so-called extraordinary measures to avoid a default until the summer, giving Congress the next several months to pass a bill increasing the debt limit.

The bad news: Democrats and Republicans are divided. House Republicans say they want to use a debt-limit increase — and the threat of default — as leverage to cut government spending. Top Democrats have likened the Republican stance to a hostage-taking situation. The sides can’t agree even on whether to negotiate.

Today’s newsletter will explain the debt limit and how it became a constant source of near-crisis in the U.S.

Self-imposed limits

There is a lot of confusion around the debt limit, largely because it’s so odd. But it’s relatively uncomplicated.

Congress regularly passes government spending bills. Since this legislation typically spends more money than it brings in, it adds to the debt.

In most countries, that would be the end of the spending process, and the government would simply take on more debt. After all, Congress is effectively saying that it’s willing to add to the debt when it passes spending bills that do just that. If Congress wanted to reduce spending, those bills seem like the most logical avenue to address such concerns.

But the U.S. has an extra step in the process: a congressionally set debt limit. This caps how much money the U.S. can borrow, which is, essentially, a ceiling on spending. (“Debt ceiling” is another term often used to refer to the congressionally set limit.) If the U.S. breaches the debt limit, it can no longer borrow money, and has to default on its existing debts. (Denmark is the only other country with a similar debt ceiling, although it raises its cap well in advance of nearing it.)

For most of the debt limit’s century-long existence, increases were largely uncontroversial.

But that has changed over the past three decades. Republicans, in particular, have used the passage of bills increasing the limit as leverage to try to force spending cuts on Democratic administrations. Democrats, too, have used it as a political tool: In 2006, Joe Biden, then a senator, joined his Democratic colleagues in opposing a debt ceiling increase to protest the cost of tax cuts and the Iraq war.

A crucial ingredient in this brinkmanship is divided government. Raising the debt ceiling is less of a problem when the same party holds power in both chambers of Congress and the White House. But when the government is divided, it makes the current scenario possible: A Republican-controlled House threatens to block a debt-limit increase that Democrats who control the Senate and White House would like to pass.

“The fastest way to guarantee that we have debt rating problems is to keep spending money we don’t have, and keep piling up debt, and that’s what we’re doing,” Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, told CNN.

In short: If lawmakers have a problem with spending, the debt ceiling offers a way to protest. But the willingness of some Republicans to risk going into default poses potentially dire consequences.

A central role

Why does this matter? Because of the crucial role that U.S. debt plays in the global financial system.

When the U.S. borrows money, it issues U.S. Treasuries. (Heard of bonds that help pay for wars? Treasuries are like that.)

Because the U.S. always pays its debts, the financial system treats Treasuries as a very safe investment. Governments, companies and people around the world buy American bonds and other securities as a way to ensure that their money is safe. They are so widely purchased, in fact, that they support much of the financial system — giving investors a backstop to take on riskier opportunities.

But if the U.S. can no longer pay its debts and defaults, the reliability and trust that make Treasuries such a safe investment vanish. Money once considered secure is now seen as precarious. That realization could spawn the equivalent of a bank run, as people rush to get their money out of the financial system. The system would then buckle, crushing everyone’s investments, big and small.

It’s as bad as it sounds. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has said a U.S. debt default “would be financial Armageddon.”

So what can seem like a technical, political squabble can suddenly become very important to everyone. The TV show “The West Wing” captured this reality in 2005: “So this debt ceiling thing is routine, or the end of the world?” “Both.”

For more

Reaching the debt cap is the result of decades of tax cuts and increased government spending by Republicans and Democrats. Both sides are trying to make sure the other party takes the fall for any dire economic consequences, The Times’s Carl Hulse writes.

This timeline explains what happens next. Republicans’ governing style dates to the conservative revolt of the 1990s, the historian Nicole Hemmer says on “The Ezra Klein Show.”

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Biden meets with Democratic leaders as debt showdown looms

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden hosted the Democratic congressional leaders Tuesday at the White House as they face a new era of divided government in Washington, staring down a debt ceiling crisis, the Russian war in Ukraine and their own party priorities running up against a new House Republican majority eager for confrontation.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-united-states-government-us-republican-party-district-of-columbia-ff8989ae082d1e11be0cf574a76143fa

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Treasury takes another ‘extraordinary’ step on debt limit

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter Tuesday to congressional leaders saying she’s suspending the reinvestment of some federal bonds in a government workers’ savings plan — an additional “extraordinary” measure to buy time for President Joe Biden and Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-united-states-government-us-department-of-the-treasury-janet-yellen-business-f62225e6c6ca554c8fe91c5c0c8e8b48

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Debt ceiling: 2011 showdown leaves lessons for Biden, GOP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The debate around raising the debt ceiling sounds eerily similar: Newly elected House Republicans, eager to confront the Democratic president in the White House, refused to raise the debt limit without cuts to federal spending.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-united-states-government-national-debt-us-republican-party-d6bfc59aa623c8c972c44e1aced85d9c

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The debt limit is the world’s highest-stakes horoscope

Not raising the debt limit would guarantee a recession

https://www.epi.org/blog/the-debt-limit-is-the-worlds-highest-stakes-horoscope-not-raising-the-debt-limit-would-guarantee-a-recession/?

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Reagan Explains Why Raising the Debt Ceiling Is Necessary

Republicans should shelve using the debt ceiling vote as a means of negotiation.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-fenn/2011/05/19/reagan-explains-why-raising-the-debt-ceiling-is-necessary

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US Debt by President: By Dollar and Percentage

Who increased the U.S. debt the most? That depends on how you measure it.

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296

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Biden, McCarthy to discuss debt limit in talks on Wednesday

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday he is looking forward to discussing with President Joe Biden a “reasonable and responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling ” when the two meet Wednesday for their first sit-down at the White House since McCarthy was elected to the post.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-united-states-government-kevin-mccarthy-business-e04740d1d172cf3900e6548180909752

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Lots of sound and fury on US debt, but not a crisis — yet

WASHINGTON (AP) — For all the sound and fury about raising the nation’s debt limit, most economists say federal borrowing is not at a crisis point ... at least not yet.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-united-states-government-center-national-debt-deab5331ae441718bc35a7c7aef6ea18

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The debt ceiling debate in focus

An issue frequently confronting the U.S. Congress is the need to raise the debt ceiling limit, which allows the federal government to continue to borrow to pay its bills. At times, this turns into a contentious political dispute, often because some members of Congress seek to use the debt ceiling requirements as leverage to pursue other policy goals.

https://www.usbank.com/investing/financial-perspectives/market-news/debt-ceiling-and-the-markets.html

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What spending cuts does GOP want to make?

Leaders say Medicare and Social Security are off the table

Candy Woodall

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy left his first White House visit with confidence that he and President Joe Biden could negotiate a spending deal, but the real test may come in negotiations with his own Republican conference.

McCarthy, who had to bargain with hardline conservatives to win his speaker bid after 15 rounds of voting, leads a fractious caucus where some members are willing to gamble with the nation's credit score and the global economy to try to get the federal spending cuts they want.

But what those cuts are, nobody seems to know.

“Their writ large approach seems to be take the hostage first and then they'll figure out later what they want,” Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., ranking member of the House Budget Committee, told USA TODAY.

Will Social Security and Medicare be cut?

McCarthy and other Republican leaders have said cuts to Social Security and Medicare should be off the table in debt limit and spending negotiations, a pivot from their midterm campaigns when they said everything was on the table.

See CUTS, Page 5A

Continued from Page 1A

House GOP Whip Tom Emmer – the congressman tasked with the big role of corralling or “whipping” the votes – said he expected McCarthy would assure Biden Wednesday the country would not default on its debt and Social Security and Medicare wouldn't be part of the negotiations.

The president and McCarthy getting together in the White House was the “responsible” thing to do and would produce a “more sensible result,” Emmer told USA TODAY.

Republicans vague about possible cuts

Though Republicans have tried to reassure voters – and especially the markets – that they will not send the U.S. economy careening toward collapse, they have been vague about how they will cut spending to fiscal year 2022 levels without touching entitlements.

When asked what spending cuts the House GOP wants, or what might pass the chamber, Emmer deflected and focused on McCarthy's meeting with Biden as a positive sign the two could negotiate.

McCarthy didn't give Biden specific spending cuts or levels of spending cuts the House GOP would accept, he told reporters at the Capitol Wednesday night after their meeting.

After facing numerous questions in recent days about spending cuts, Emmer said in a statement Wednesday night, “Democrats and the media want to fearmonger about spending cuts. House Republicans are talking about spending reforms.”

He said the GOP is working on a “responsible, reasonable and sensible” budget “so we're not mortgaging our children and grandchildren's futures.”

The House budget is due April 15, and Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the caucus is working to meet that deadline.

Some of the conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C., influencing government spending, such as the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America, have proposed billions worth of cuts each to defense, Housing and Urban Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Health and Human Services.

Even with billions in cuts to those programs, getting to 2022 budget levels without touching Social Security and Medicare seems nearly impossible, Democrats said.

“The math is nowhere close to adding up,” Boyle said.

What happened with the last debt ceiling fight?

McCarthy said he was specific with Biden about one thing: “We're not going to pass a clean debt ceiling.”

That view could lead to a five-month political fight and lower the nation's credit rating, though McCarthy said he thought the two sides could reach an agreement “long before” a default.

Democrats say, if history shows anything, a GOP-led spending fight with a Democratic president could work in Democrats' favor.

Boyle pointed out former President Bill Clinton was hammered in the 1994 midterms and handed House Democrats their first loss in 40 years. He started to make a comeback in a debt ceiling fight with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and ultimately won reelection in 1996 by 8 points.

When former President Barack Obama was underwater on his approval rating in 2011, he mounted a comeback in a debt ceiling fight with Tea Party conservatives. That year, the U.S. had its firstever downgrade of its credit rating and made it cost more money for the country to borrow. Obama won reelection a year later.

“You'd think Republicans would learn from history,” Boyle said. “Each time they lost in the court of public opinion and set up the next Democratic victory.”

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With the exception of politicians anyone with two brain cells to rub together could certainly suggest spending cuts. A little research a high school student could give many spending cuts without harming  US families, defense, education etc.  While it may be entertaining to watch hamsters fight , that should probably take a back seat to Social Security cuts.

 

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: Rand Paul Releases His 2022 Festivus Report

Spencer BrownDecember 23, 2022 11:30 AM

    

 

Greg Nash/Pool via AP

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) kept up his holiday tradition of releasing an annual "Festivus Report" on Friday, shining a light on the ways in which the federal government wasted Americans' hard-earned tax dollars on frivolous, woke, and absurd projects during the year. 

In his 2022 issue of the Festivus Report, Paul logged $482,276,543,907 worth of wasteful spending, "including a steroid-induced hamster fight club, a study to see if kids love their pets, and a study of the romantic patterns of parrots." Yes, really. "No matter how much money’s already been wasted, politicians keep demanding even more," Paul noted in this year's report. 

Among the government's gripe-worthy fiscal escapades outlined by Senator Paul was the Department of Defense's $28 million payment for "forest-patterned 'camouflage' uniforms" for use in Afghanistan. While that might seem like a fair use of tax dollars, there was a problem: the camouflage uniforms were "not based on an evaluation of its appropriateness for the Afghan environment." That is, you could clearly see the uniforms and whoever was wearing them against the Afghan backdrop. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction was blunt in his report that included the not- camouflage waste: it was a "dumb decision."

In other clearly inane uses of taxpayer dollars, the General Services Administration spends more than $1.7 billion per year for the upkeep of more than 75,000 empty buildings. Thanks to federal bureaucracy, the government is not allowed to just sell a building once it no longer needs to use it, and instead has to run through a list of other parties who are eligible to take over and use the building, but that doesn't always happen. So, Americans who are struggling to make ends meet amid soaring inflation are also being forced to foot the bill for the U.S. government to maintain empty, unused buildings.

In one of the more wacky items in the 2022 Festivus Report, it turns out that the National Institutes of Health spent more than $3 million this year — and every year going back to 1996 — to pump hamsters full of steroids in order to study "whether current drugs for aggressive youth suppress steroid-induced aggression" at Northeastern University. Rodent roid rage research is, apparently, a long-running and expensive venture funded by our tax dollars.

In the household pet-turned lab rat column, Paul also noted that the NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse spent $2.3 million to inject beagle puppies with cocaine in the same lab that previously received $13.5 million to inject monkeys with ebola and tuberculosis. Whatever the government's obsession is with forcibly getting animals high, it's certainly expensive.

And it's not just drugs, either. Paul's report noted that, "since 2017, the NIH has given the University of Concepcion in Chile $1,101,157115 to study the influence of glycine receptors on alcohol consumption….by training mice to get drunk." Evidently, the U.S. taxpayer-funded scientists would inject alcohol straight into the mice in order to get them inebriated, locked them in a small enclosure, then noted their reactions. "Researchers hoped the study would be 'a novel opportunity' to treat alcohol use disorders," the Festivus Report noted.

Senator Paul's report also noted the more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds that were given to the University of Illinois at Chicago to help pay for its study "to see if there is any correlation between colorectal cancer risk and structural violence caused by social determinants such as racism," but the subjects of the study were...mice. Paul's report noted that not only do mice lack any concept of race, but the study has, shockingly, not been successful. "But, think on the bright side, the researchers probably got to witness some very thrilling MMA-style fights in the lab!" Paul quipped. "That is something that all American taxpayers should be proud to be paying for."

The full 2022 Festivus Report can be viewed here, but it's clear — as Senator Paul noted — that no amount of spending ever satiates the federal government's desire to throw millions of taxpayer dollars at projects that are either not where funding was intended to go or that end up failing to create any benefit for the American taxpayer. 

The reality of the national debt and the other economic woes faced by Americans as a result of President Biden's failed "build back better" policies is bleak, but at least as Senator Paul shows each year with his Festivus Report, it can at least provide some entertainment while we contemplate how we'll charge our mandatory electric vehicles without a working power grid. 

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How can anyone believe, politicians or citizens, that it is a real struggle to find expenses for the US government can cut to reduce spending

 

More Crazy, Stupid Wasteful Government Spending

Craig Eyermann  •  Monday, July 18, 2022

What is the dumbest thing the federal government has wasted money on lately?

That’s a difficult question to answer, but only because politicians waste so much of U.S. taxpayers’ money. Fortunately, government spending watchdog OpenTheBooks provides their answers to that question in their annual “Where’s the Pork?” report.

What makes these reports fun to read aren’t the most wasteful items that cost billions and include things like the Paycheck Protection Program and the pandemic unemployment insurance programs. Instead, it’s because politicians cannot stop themselves from funding things that unquestionably provide little, if any, benefit to ordinary Americans. Here’s a short list of my favorite entries from this year’s edition with links to OpenTheBooks’ feature stories about the spending:

• • Fauci’s NIAID spent $478,188 to turn monkeys transgender
  • $6.9 million smart toilet analyzes “anal print”
  • Feds give $300,000 to virtual reality penguin study
  • The State Department gave $25,000 in grants to Chinese surfers
  • Harvard spent $75,000 in federal grants to blow lizards off trees with leaf blowers

As you read these examples, remember that the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding was nearly $30.5 trillion as of June 30, 2022, or $90,371.71 per living American.

That brings me to a very specific line item from this year’s report:

According to the United States Treasury, the United States spent $562.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2021 on interest payments alone. This money isn’t going towards paying off our current $30 trillion debt obligations, this just covers the cost of borrowing the money.

Money used to pay interest cannot be used to pay for anything else. For governments dependent on borrowing to support their spending, interest on their national debt is the one bill they must pay.

If they don’t, they risk defaulting on their national debt like Sri Lanka. That country’s leaders spent a lot of money very stupidly for far longer than they could afford. If you haven’t noticed, things are not going well in that country.

 

Craig Eyermann is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.
Beacon Posts by Craig Eyermann | Full Biography and Publications

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Did Joe Biden Increase — or Decrease — the Federal Deficit Since He Became President?

On Feb. 7, 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a State of the Union address and claimed, "In the last two years, my administration cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion – the largest deficit reduction in American history."

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/09/joe-biden-increase-national-deficit-800-billion/?

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IPSHEET

Did Biden Fib Again About Reducing the Federal Deficit?

Mia CathellFebruary 08, 2023 3:00 pm

    

 

Townhall Media

President Joe Biden's gaffe-filled State of the Union Address last night was littered with lies, cringeworthy blunders, and pro-Biden administration propaganda. Among the distortions, Biden repeated his go-to talking point on America's supposedly declining federal deficit.

CLAIM: "In the last two years, my administration cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion—the largest deficit reduction in American history," Biden claimed in the annual address. "Under the previous administration, America's deficit went up four years in a row."

FACTS: While it is accurate that the deficit—when the federal government's spending exceeds its tax revenues—fell by $1.7 trillion in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, Biden's self-congratulatory praise failed to acknowledge that the reason for the deficit's decline was the record-high increase in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump because of bipartisan pandemic-relief packages. As expected, the deficit dropped when the pandemic-era emergency spending expired. Thus, it's not Biden's doing.

Quite the contrary, independent analysts assert that Biden's actions, such as his executive orders as well as deficit-increasing policies and bills he has backed, have added to current and future deficits—"not reduced" them. Dan White, the senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics, a leading financial firm whose economic assessments Biden has frequently cited during presidential remarks, told CNN in the fall: "On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it."

Meanwhile, non-profit public policy organization Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published a September report that found that policymakers in the Biden administration are continuing to borrow at an excessive level, a spending spree that will contribute more than a whopping $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031 through legislative and executive actions.

CRFB president Maya MacGuineas declared in an October statement to CNN that the "White House is knowingly twisting the facts to tell a very different story than a fair and accurate one." Commenting on where credit is due, the president of the deficit watchdog added: "I'd love to give the White House credit. Unfortunately, their record doesn't give you anything to cheer about."

Townhall has previously debunked Biden's deficit-cutting claims that he has repeated—and continues to repeat—ad nauseam.

RATING: Biden's boast is misleading, lacks context, and takes credit for an expected expiration of pandemic-related spending. It's a victory lap Biden has gone on often despite the fact that the deficit drop was driven down by waning COVID-19 relief. After the relief lapsed, the deficit would've fallen much more had spending-happy measures not been implemented, budget hawks say.

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U.S. likely to default on debt between July and September unless Congress acts, CBO says

WASHINGTON — Congress has until at least July to broker a bipartisan debt agreement if lawmakers want to avoid a first-ever default, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/02/15/u-s-likely-to-default-on-debt-between-july-and-september-unless-congress-acts-cbo-says/?

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McConnell's marching orders to McCarthy: 'There's not going to be a default'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—still in a cold sweat over the possibility that House Republicans could doom the GOP in 2024—is trying everything possible to keep the House bomb-throwers from sinking the entire party.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2153072/-McConnell-s-marching-orders-to-McCarthy-There-s-not-going-to-be-a-default?

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Will it take market crash for Congress to raise debt limit?

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s one way to force President Joe Biden and Congress to solve the looming crisis over the debt limit: a financial market crash.

https://apnews.com/article/debt-limit-financial-market-crash-biden-mccarthy-d3457c2b464e826bb7672f7f8a2707fd

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Threatening a U.S. default was bad before. Now, it’s colossally idiotic.

A plea to lawmakers: If it was a bad idea to threaten default on U.S. debt before, it would be astoundingly, colossally idiotic now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/16/bank-failures-debt-limit/?

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Biden administration details potential cuts in education, food aid and more under GOP plan

WASHINGTON — Federal departments and agencies say U.S. House Republicans’ plans to cut federal spending would result in reductions to key programs like food aid, education assistance and wildfire management.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/03/20/biden-administration-details-potential-cuts-in-education-food-aid-and-more-under-gop-plan/?