- Posted January 15, 2013 by
This iReport is part of an assignment:
Who Said What About National Debt?
In 2000, U.S. national debt was about 57% of GDP … today it is a full 102%. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that in 25 years our debt will be double our GDP, meaning we will owe more than twice the value of all goods and services produced in America in an entire year.
We are adding more than $1 trillion to it every year. If we continue spending at that rate then, in the coming decades, the interest on the debt alone will be nearly impossible to pay.
The interest on the national debt last year was more than $450 billion.
The fight to raise the debt ceiling is not new, as some in the media would like us to believe. It is much easier to assign the role of hero or villain to a politician when you believe that this is the first time a president has been challenged. So….just to make a horrible situation interesting, let’s play a guessing game of “who said”
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
“If my Republican friends believe that increasing our debt by almost $800 billion today and more than $3 trillion over the last five years is the right thing to do, they should be upfront about it. They should explain why they think more debt is good for the economy.
How can the Republican majority in this Congress explain to their constituents that trillions of dollars in new debt is good for our economy? How can they explain that they think it’s fair to force our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren to finance this debt through higher taxes. That’s what it will have to be. Why is it right to increase our nation’s dependence on foreign creditors?
They should explain this. Maybe they can convince the public they’re right. I doubt it. Because most Americans know that increasing debt is the last thing we should be doing. After all, I repeat, the Baby Boomers are about to retire. Under the circumstances, any credible economist would tell you we should be reducing debt, not increasing it. Democrats won’t be making argument to supper this legalization, which will weaken our country. Weaken our county.”
The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.
I know we all want to believe what our politicians tell us. I know we want to believe that they share our concerns. I know we want to believe that they have our back. It is quotes like these compared to what they are saying today that makes me very wary of anything they have to say. Are they telling us only what we want to hear to get elected? Or do they really care?
I suspect some people will read this and say; well the republicans are just as guilty of spending as the democrats. Of course you are right to an extent. But, I do want to point out that, like ‘em or not, the TEA party came on the scene in 2010 and have changed the direction of the Republican Party. They have screamed, yelled, opposed and resorted to whatever they could to demand less taxes and less government spending. Of course them doing so, has caused them to be painted as heretics by the media. My questions is…would the president have aligned himself with a democratic TEA party back in 2006?