Going Into Default.

[Editorial]

Credit: John Darkow, Columbia Missourian
CTNewsJunkie via Cagle Cartoons

The United State will go into default on it’s debt and the Republicans are standing fast on cutting the budget. They want to cut SNAP (Food stamps) and WIC and some Republican legislators want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

I asked Google Bard about the increase of the national debt for the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations and its answer was:

• The national debt increased by $9.3 trillion during Barack Obama's presidency. When Obama took office in January 2009, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. By the time he left office in January 2017, the national debt had increased to $19.9 trillion. The increase in the national debt was due to a number of factors, including the Great Recession, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration. The Great Recession caused a sharp decline in tax revenue and an increase in government spending on unemployment benefits and other programs. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also cost the government billions of dollars. And the Bush tax cuts, which were enacted in 2001 and 2003, reduced tax revenue by an estimated $1.5 trillion over ten years.
• According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the national debt increased by $7.8 trillion during the Trump administration. The national debt was $20.2 trillion when Trump took office in January 2017, and it was $28 trillion when he left office in January 2021. The increase in the national debt was due to a number of factors, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which reduced federal revenue by an estimated $1.5 trillion over ten years; increased military spending; and the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a sharp decline in tax revenue and an increase in government spending on unemployment benefits and other programs.As of March 8, 2023, the national debt is $30.4 trillion.
• When President Biden took office on January 20, 2021, the national debt was $28.9 trillion. Therefore, the national debt has increased by $1.5 trillion during the Biden administration. The increase in the national debt is due to a number of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a sharp decline in tax revenue and an increase in government spending on unemployment benefits and other programs; the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which provided $1.9 trillion in economic relief; and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which provided $1.2 trillion in funding for infrastructure projects.

Now I want to point out that one, the Republican House of Representatives is threatening to send the government into default on it’s debt. Two they are blaming president Biden for the deficit when in reality it is Trump’s debt! Three they refuse to raise the taxes on the millionaires and billionaires.

The Debt Ceiling Debate Is About More Than Debt

Republicans’ opening bid to avert economic catastrophe by raising the nation’s borrowing limit focuses more on energy policy than reducing debt.

New York Times

By Jim Tankersley

April 21, 2023

Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California has repeatedly said that he and his fellow House Republicans are refusing to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, and risking economic catastrophe, to force a reckoning on America’s $31 trillion national debt.

“Without exaggeration, America’s debt is a ticking time bomb that will detonate unless we take serious, responsible action,” he said this week.

But the bill Mr. McCarthy introduced on Wednesday would only modestly change the nation’s debt trajectory. It also carries a second big objective that has little to do with debt: undercutting President Biden’s climate and clean energy agenda and increasing American production of fossil fuels.

This is blackmail. They are holding the senior citizens hostage, they will not receive their Social Security checks when the nation goes into default.

The legislation, which Republicans plan to vote on next week, is meant to force Mr. Biden to negotiate over raising the debt limit, which is currently capped at $31.4 trillion. Unless the cap is lifted, the federal government — which borrows huge sums of money to pay its bills — is expected to run out of cash as early as June. The House Rules Committee said on Friday that it will meet on Tuesday to consider the bill and possibly advance it to a floor vote.

[…]

The Republican plan also gives priority to removing clean energy incentives that were included in Mr. Biden’s signature climate, health and tax law. That legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, included tax credits and other provisions meant to encourage electric vehicle sales, advanced battery production, utility upgrades and a variety of energy efficiency efforts.

Pure blackmail.

During the Trump administration did you hear anything from the Republicans when the debt went up by $7.8 trillion dollars? All you heard was crickets from the Republicans. But now according to them it is worst thing since the Edsel. It is nothing but politics with us as the pawns.

At the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, Mr. McCarthy accused the president and his party of already adding “$6 trillion to our nation’s debt burden,” ignoring the bipartisan support enjoyed by most of the spending Mr. Biden has signed into law.

The Republicans also voted for all the tax packages during the Trump administration, we didn’t hear one complaint then but now it is a crisis and the seniors and the disabled will be paying the price for the politics.

They really don’t care about the people. It is just like the former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said, it is all about power for the Republicans. They dream of holding a trifecta, the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives and our country will never be the same again.

MSNBC reported that, 

That said, yesterday’s developments did break some new ground. A reporter asked Biden, “Are you willing to take unilateral action, like invoking the 14^th Amendment, to make sure that [default] doesn’t happen?” The Democrat replied, “I have been considering the 14th Amendment. And a man I have enormous respect for, Larry Tribe, who advised me for a long time, thinks that it would be legitimate.”

Biden added, however, “But the problem is it would have to be litigated. And in the meantime, without an extension, it would still end up in the same place.”

He obviously didn’t explicitly endorse the provocative tactic, but the comments suggested the president is leaving the door open to circumventing Congress to prevent Republicans from crashing the economy.

VOX explains the 14^th Amendment…

The amendment included many provisions, including a section that guaranteed citizenship to freedmen and that promised that all state governments abandon racial discrimination. It also included the Public Debt Clause, which was enacted to punish the Confederacy’s creditors while simultaneously protecting lenders that helped finance the Union. It declares that all debts “incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave” shall be “illegal and void.”

The framers of this amendment feared that white Southerners and their sympathizers might regain control of Congress, and use that control to retaliate against the North by canceling its war debts as well — a fear accentuated by the fact that, after emancipation, former slaves would no longer count as only three-fifths of a person when determining how many representatives each state would have in the House. As legal scholar Jacob Charles wrote in a 2013 law review note, “as a consequence of emancipation and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the South and its interests would receive increased representation in Congress.”

Accordingly, the Public Debt Clause also included language intended to prevent a future Congress from repudiating the Union’s war debts. It provides that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

This language, however, is much broader than a mere guarantee that the Union will pay off its war debts. Its explicit text protects the “validity of the public debt” in perpetuity. And it doesn’t simply say that the federal government’s debt shall not be canceled, it makes the sweeping demand that this debt “shall not be questioned” — language that is so broad that it seems to forbid any law that would even raise uncertainty about whether the United States will pay what it owes.

The debt ceiling is just such a law. The entire reason why it is a potent tool that House Republicans can use to extract concessions from President Biden is that it creates uncertainty about whether or not the United States will pay its debts. As law professor Michael Abramowicz wrote in a 2011 paper, “unless the Secretary ultimately has the authority to borrow to make payments on the public debt, the debt-limit statute leaves open the possibility of default and violates the Public Debt Clause.”

What the Republicans are doing is extortion! The budget was passed and voted on and now the Republicans want to renege on the budget.

Notice that they ban abortions but want to cut SNAP (Food stamps) and WIC so much for protecting the children. 

[/Editorial]