The "Debt Crisis"

As I write this, Congress is paralyzed by debate on increasing the federal debt ceiling. ALl the news media is screaming “The sky is falling.” The paralysis is over who will get to tack on their favorite pork barrel projects on to this “must have” legislation. As well as who will be able to take credit for the “debt reduction” that will also be attached. The rhetoric is getting almost ridiculous as even the President adds fuel to the flames by saying things like “I can’t guarantee that Social Security checks will go out in August if the ceiling isn’t raised.” Of course he can’t, he has NO control over Social Security (who by the way has plenty of money to pay checks for the foreseeable future). But this is simply a scare tactic to get the people to pressurize the Congress to vote for the president’s package, which you can bet pours a lot of money to his supporters.

As I hear from the decidedly biased news, the debate is over a few billion dollars here and there, some of which is already in place like reductions in the war in Afghanistan. All of this is in the face of a 14.6 TRILLION debt. A few billion dollars will only pay the interest on that debt for a few days (the interest is about a Billion dollars a day). We need debt reductions in the trillions to make any meaningful reductions.

We have been warned that if we default on raising the debt ceiling our credit rating will be downgraded, which will increase the cost of borrowing money. Well, since if we can’t raise the debt ceiling, we can’t borrow any more, what does it matter? Is it so bad that the country has to live within it’s means? Besides most of this debt is owed to foreign investors like the China government. Not many of them have our best interests at heart. Defaulting on that might not be a bad idea.

Hey we could even declare bankruptcy and dump all that debt, then use the money we would have payed in interest to invest in some really meaningful things like energy independence and rebuilding the country’s manufacturing infrastructure. Not so bad cause our credit rating would already be in the tank. We’d have to be independent, because no foreign countries would trade with us. Again, this might not be such a bad thing.

OK, yes, I agree that bankruptcy would be a bad idea, but as a worse case scenario it isn't as bad as what some of the media (and the government) says will happen. Besides, what is so hard about passing a bill that raises the debt ceiling enough to give us time to balance the budget. Just leave off all the riders and pass the damn bill.