August 04, 2004

On May 23rd of last year, Congress raised the national debt limit $984 billion. They would have made it an even trillion but the oligarchy, our millionaire congressional representatives, didn't want to appear piggish.

That increase put the federal government's silly self imposed debt limit at a new ceiling of $7.384 trillion (7 trillion, 384 billion).

As of July 30th of this year, exactly 14 months later, the national debt stands at $7.317 trillion, $67 billion short of the limit.

That means the Bush administration has increased our debt $917 billion in the last fourteen months, a record increase and additional burden put on the shoulders of every future taxpayer in the country. There's nobody else to pay off any portion of this debt.

In case you don't want to bother with the math, that's an average increase of $65.5 billion a month or more than $2 billion a day in new debt. We are adding debt at the rate of $1,539,351 every minute, twenty-four hours a day, every day of the month, weekends and holidays included. The debt clock in Times Square must be running full bore.

A nine hundred and seventeen billion dollar increase in debt is more money than the federal government receives yearly in individual income taxes. In other words, your income tax payments would have to more than double to equal this amount. Take a look at what that would be like on your pay stub.

Of course, we are only two months from the close of the fiscal year on September 30th and it's an election year where we are only three months from the national vote.

The Bush administration will do everything it can to forestall any possible arguments on raising the debt limit before elections. Reaching the debt ceiling will indisputably mean that Bush has gone through one trillion dollars since May 23rd of 2003.

Therefore, you can expect Bush to suddenly become very frugal, no matter what it means to paying for the war on terrorism, supporting our troops overseas, or social programs at home. The government will now go into stall mode.

In 2003, when the government hit the debt ceiling of $6.4 trillion on February 20th, the Treasury was able to go 92 days without adding one red cent to the debt and without a peep from the loyal lapdogs of the media. At least there wasn't a peep until a few days before the ceiling was raised nearly a trillion dollars on May 23rd.

If conspiracy theorists are looking for an example of media or Fourth Estate collaboration and collusion with the government, this is a perfect example. It was a definite and deliberate avoidance of "news that's fit to print."

The Bush administration has already begun to scale back on borrowing. As of July 30th, it has borrowed a mere $41 billion, well below the monthly average for the last few years.

No matter what the government does, it cannot change the fact that the Bush administration has added $917 billion to our debt in just 14 months.

In fairness, not all of this $917 billion was money borrowed. Some of it, approximately $68 billion in fiscal 2004, has come from awarding the Social Security trust funds annual interest. And this does not include the annual interest handed other entitlements like the Military Retirement and the Federal Employees Retirement Systems (FERS) trust funds.

This interest is paid by simply handing these entitlement trusts more bogus bonds with no money whatsoever involved. It's done just to carry on the fiction that the government "borrowed" or "invested" overpayments or surpluses when they actually stole that money to spend elsewhere. In fiscal 2003, the amount stolen from Social Security overpayments alone was $82 billion.

John Kerry, the democratic hopeful, tells us he will "restore trust in government" but he has nothing to say about how the Social Security trust funds became 22.3 percent of the national debt. And for years he has served on the Senate Finance Committee, the Sub Committee on Social Security, and the Senate Sub Committee on Medicare and Family Services.

In other words, John Kerry is a major player with the Beltway Bandits and thoroughly understands how he, the rest of Congress, and the administrations (both Democrat and Republican) have been ripping off the American workers for years by stealing and spending a good part of our payroll tax retirement money. What a hypocrite.

And the sad thing is that the solution is so simple. All they have to do is to stop stealing the overcharges or "surpluses" every worker in America is paying through payroll taxes and believes is going towards their supplemental retirement account. Once the stealing has stopped, there are only two choices.

1. Either return surplus overpayments to workers in the form of a payroll tax cut, or:

2. Put the surpluses in a real trust fund similar to the federal governments own Thrift Savings Account.

If the government truly needs more money let them raise taxes honestly.

These same choices apply to all of the other entitlement trust funds set up to double tax American taxpayers.

When are we going to do something about this criminal fraud and double bookkeeping? If you are waiting for the media to bring it up -- forget it.

Editor's note: There is no honest reason this government "needs" more money. Unfortunately, the taxes DO keep going up and up. One of them is called inflation - the reduction of the buying power of our money. The cost of government regulation is another tax that keeps on growing, and the low interest rate that keeps savings and investment low are another cost of this bloated government though it isn't a direct "tax". Why people can't see that they are continuing to feed an 800 lb gorilla that has taken over their lives is beyond me. Wake up, America!

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Archives

Pay More Through Sneaky Tax Increases

Staying The Course - Will We Survive It?

USA-MA - Mother of Uncle Scam?

Abu Ghraib - The Buck Stops Where?

Sucker Punch? For World War Three

Rumsfeld Pleads Administration

The Draft - A Reminder

What A Crock - Reasons For Not Releasing Photos

Tax Base And The Economy

Posse Comitatus - Do You Think You're Safe?

We'll Meet Again; Don't Know Where, Don't Know When

Banish Bush To Gitmo

Double Taxation Continues Unabated

The Stall Begins On The Debt Limit

Trust Gramps And Ignore The Polls-

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