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Earth to MSNBC executives: your anchor, your reporter, and your editors do not know what they’re talking about. They just badly misinformed your viewers.
The “debt ceiling” is a limit on debt, not spending. The “ceiling” is an artificial limit set by Congress; it can be raised, even repealed, with zero harm to the Republic. There is no intrinsic reason why the US cannot raise its level of debt above current levels. There are, however, many reasons why it should raise this arbitrary limit to avoid serious harm to the credit of the United States. Your report explained none of them.
Mr. Lui’s tee shirt is mislabeled. Spending is not debt. In the simplest terms, the total debt is the accumulated difference between revenues and spending. Mr. Lui’s tee shirt, by itself, is meaningless, and his explanation is misleading.
You might have explained that there are no spending cut proposals from Republicans that would not require raising the debt ceiling by from several hundred billions to over a trillion dollars. That’s because the additional debt from this year’s budget, never mind next year’s, is over a trillion dollars. Treasury says we’ll likely hit the current arbitrary ceiling by March or so. The ever-shrinking Republican proposals would cut less that $50 billion this year. So under the Republican proposals, the debt ceiling must be raised by several hundred billions this year and more next year.
So ditch the clowns, MSNBC, and explain this correctly. You owe your audience a correction. Jeez.
[h/t TPM]
11 Comments
ps apologies to lgid; yeah, I know, but one remedial step at a time, or their heads will explode.
Thanks. Hope the one-step does some good. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Round numbers:
US spends $10bn/day
US receives $6bn/day
deficit $4bn/day
So $50bn is less than a fortnight’s deficit.
Just catching up to this one SC, thanks for the diary.
Fuckin insane . . . will this diary go to MSNBC Management I hope?
‘Kin idjits.
I ‘second’ that ‘you need to provide a correction’ concept.
Big time!
Why doesn’t Congress simply repeal the debt ceiling and avoid this silliness forever?
Now THERE’S an idea. Send the drunks to the bar so they can quit drinking?!
If I understand correctly, there is no spending limit and the government can print money to conver its expenses. So the only reason to tax and borrow is to take money out of circulation, thereby fighting inflation. Right?
And, if we think of the Fed as part of the government, Quantitative Easing amounts to unborrowing, i.e., paying off some of the national debt, with freshly printed money. Right?
Considering it’s never stopped additional spending in the past, it isn’t based on anything other than a completely arbitrary number, and the only thing it succeeds in doing is providing a faux-crisis to leverage to further screw us out of what comprises a modern civilized society… I can’t think of a single good reason to keep it.
Oh, and then there’s the fact that we might be the only industrialized country that even operates with such an idiotic political formality.
Congress doesn’t do a lot of things it should because the Senate is paralyzed. the Democrats should have repealed both the debt ceiling and the requirement to issue debt when the Government deficit spends in early 2009, soon after they used the nuclear option to get rid of the filibuster.
But if they did these things they wouldn’t have had any excuses for not passing an a stimulus people that was big enough to get everyone back to work and they also would have had no excuse for not passing Medicare for All. The Dems are all about keeping intact the rod blocks that facilitate their kabuki.
The spending limit is determined by Congressional appropriations. the Executive Branch can’t spend what hasn’t been appropriated.
Treasury make take cash out of circulation, but they don’t prevent Government deficit spending from adding net financial assets. The proof is here: http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2010/11/yes-government-bonds-add-to-private.html
Follow the discussion on this post. it’s terrific.
The reasons to tax are three. First, to maintain the value of the currency., since taxes can only be paid using it. Second, to destroy net financial assets and thereby decrease aggregate demand. Fighting inflation, as you say above. And third, to re-distribute and help to create a pattern of wealth distribution that isn’t threatening to democracy.