Was sent this article. What are the implications for us locally in Australia in the upper Kedron Brook valley of the US’s financial situation?
15 reasons why US can never balance budget ever again.
Commission Is An Exercise In Futility – The U.S. Government Will Never Have
A Balanced Budget Ever Again
Nov 11 2010
The following are 15 facts that reveal just how obscene the U.S. national
debt has become and why it is now basically impossible to balance the
budget of the U.S. government at this point..
#1 On average the U.S. government accumulates about 4 billion dollars more
debt each day.
#2 In just the last 30 years the U.S. government has accumulated 12 trillion
dollars more debt.
#3 According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress the U.S.
national debt will
climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
#4 The U.S. government has to borrow
spends.
#5 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like
all publicly-traded corporations must) the annual U.S. government budget
deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood
trillion.
#6 The Congressional Budget Office projects that the health care bill
recently passed by Congress
trillion dollars to our debt over the next ten years.
#7
Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama’s 3.8 trillion dollar budget for
2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or is money that is
spent on their behalf. Any attempt to reduce those payments will make a lot
of people very angry.
#8 According to the Congressional Budget Office in 2010 the Social Security
system
will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. That was
not supposed to happen until at least 2016.
#9 Back in 1950 each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by
approximately 16 workers. Today each retiree’s Social Security benefit is
paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected
retiree.
#10
official U.S. government report rapidly growing interest costs on the U.S.
national debt together with spending on major entitlement programs such as
Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every
dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a single penny
is spent on anything else.
#11 Right now interest on the U.S. national debt and spending on
entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare falls somewhere
between 10 percent and 15 percent of GDP each year. By 2080 they are
projected to eat up
#12 The present value of projected scheduled benefits exceeds earmarked
revenues for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare
dollars over the next 75 years.
#13 After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data Boston University
economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government
is facing a
gap” of $202 trillion dollars.
#14 At our current pace the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that
U.S. government public debt will hit
the year 2080.
#15 Sometimes we forget just how big a trillion dollars is. If right this
moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second it
would take you
one trillion dollars. The U.S. national debt increased by more than a
trillion dollars last year it will increase by more than a trillion dollars
this year and it is being projected to increase by more than a trillion
dollars the following year.
We are literally drowning in debt. We have been living beyond our means for
decades and most Americans do not understand that eventually that is
really really going to start catching up with us.
Already the United States is fading as an economic power. According to the
Conference Board China will surpass the United States and will become
the year 2012.
That is just two years away.
So how did we get into such a mess? Well it all goes back
created to enslave the United States government in an endlessly growing
spiral of debt from which it would never be able to escape. (I would also
like to add the motivation for the bankers besides world dominance was
“revenge.”)
In a surprise move the co-chairs of Barack Obama’s national debt commission
released their preliminary proposals to the media on Wednesday. The
proposals are actually quite modest – they recommend that nothing be
implemented until 2012 because of the weak economy and their plan would not
balance the federal budget until 2037 – but almost as soon as it was
released Democrats and Republicans both started screaming bloody murder
about how they would not support it. The truth is that virtually none of
our politicians are willing to make the hard choices that would be necessary
to get the national debt under control. Today the U.S. national debt is
rapidly approaching 14 trillion dollars and it is growing at an exponential
rate. It is the single largest debt in the history of the world and it has
increased in size for 53 years in a row. It would be very difficult to
understate the true horror of the debt that the U.S. federal government has
accumulated. So what is the solution? As you will see below there isn’t
one. In fact it will be an absolute miracle if our leaders are able to
even slow down the rate at which the debt is growing in the years ahead.
The deficit reduction plan put forward by Erskine Bowles a former White
House chief of staff under Bill Clinton and Alan Simpson a former
Republican Senator from Wyoming does not even have support from the rest of
Barack Obama’s national debt commission. There is no way that either most
Democrats or most Republicans in Congress will ever accept it. But at least
the Bowles-Simpson plan is making headlines around the world and has brought
the national debt back to the center of the political debate in this
country.
In some ways the Bowles-Simpson plan is a complete and total fantasy. For
example it assumes that the U.S. economy is going to fully recover and will
experience solid growth for many years to come. That simply is not going to
happen. The prosperity of the last couple of decades has been fueled by
way that is going to continue. At some point the U.S. economy is going to
fall apart like a house of cards.
But even if the U.S. economy could magically meet the projections contained
in the Bowles-Simpson plan it still contains a whole host of “poison pills”
which make it completely and totally unacceptable to both political
parties..
*The plan calls for deep cuts to U.S. military spending. The Republicans
will never go for that.
*The plan reduces Social Security benefits to most retirees in future
decades. The Democrats will never go for that.
*The plan raises the Social Security payroll tax cap to $190000. The
Republicans will never go for that.
*The plan envisions a very slow rise in the retirement age from 67 to 68 by
2050 and finally to 69 by 2075. The Democrats will never go for that.
*The plan includes a “less generous” annual cost-of-living adjustment for
Social Security benefits. Considering the fact that Social Security
benefits are already not going to see an increase this upcoming year this
proposal is likely to upset a large number of seniors.
*The plan calls for the federal tax on gasoline to approximately double by
2015. The Republicans would never go for that and if that was ever
implemented it would have a very serious negative impact on the economy.
*The plan would eliminate the deductibility of mortgage interest payments.
Millions upon millions of homeowners would be absolutely furious.
*The plan would tax health benefits provided by employers. That would make
millions of people very angry.
*The plan also calls for huge cuts in farm subsidies. There are a lot less farmers than there used …