US Debt Cap

Originally posted by no1marauder
Ron, yes; Rand no. During the Republican primary he said that defense spending should increase as a share of total federal spending. Granted, that could be done with really severe cuts in all other spending and less severe, but still sizable cuts in defense spending, but I doubt that's what he'll propose.

He just posted his proposed budget bill with 500billion in cuts.
It includes 47billion in cuts to the defense budget. I would have preferred more, but I guess its a start. Plus another 24billion from the homeland security budget.

Overview:
http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Overview-500-billion-cuts-2.pdf
The actual bill:
http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/500Bcutsbill.pdf

Originally posted by tmetzler
He just posted his proposed budget bill with 500billion in cuts.
It includes 47billion in cuts to the defense budget. I would have preferred more, but I guess its a start. Plus another 24billion from the homeland security budget.

Overview:
http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Overview-500-billion-cuts-2.pdf
The actual bill:
http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/500Bcutsbill.pdf

From your first link:

Relative to FY2010 levels, this proposal reflects a 2.7 percent decrease of all military spending.

That's a joke, not a start. Much of the savings from Homeland Security seem to be from moving the Coast Guard to Defense which is no real cut at all.

We cannot let the gov't default--we mst raise the cap. In war, one always wants to fight on the battleground of hos own choosing. In this case, we'll have to fight that battle whenever and wherever it falls.

Originally posted by MacSwain
I read and hear from some sources: US government MUST increase the present borrowing cap to avoid the possibility of default.

I submit, if the cap were to be increased it simply continues ‘business as usual’ resulting in this spendthrift government continuing to spend more than it collects at the fantastic rate of 1 to 2 trillion per year until, in th ...[text shortened]... E default or do you let UNAVOIDABLE default be imposed upon you by outside sources?

Discuss.

If they don't increase the debt ceiling then they will default. There are ways to string it a long for a bit (by exchanging short-term maturities for long-term ones). Maybe there are a few more extreme stop-gap tactics the Treasury could pull as well, but eventually they would run out.

I doubt Congress can even pass a bill that will bring annual deficits to under 3% of GDP by 2020, but you think that they can figure out how to make deficits from this year forward negative. Preposterous.

Those sources you're reading are either being deliberately silly, or really have no grasp on the budget figures and the size of our debt.

Here is a Bernanke quote from the news article below:

In the unlikely event that Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling, the federal government wouldn't be able to pay its bills, triggering a crisis, Bernanke said. Interest rates would spike, slowing spending by Americans and derailing the recovery.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_bernanke_economy

Originally posted by Metal Brain
Here is a Bernanke quote from the news article below:

In the unlikely event that Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling, the federal government wouldn't be able to pay its bills, triggering a crisis, Bernanke said. Interest rates would spike, slowing spending by Americans and derailing the recovery.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_bernanke_economy

Well there you go. All of their decisions have already been made. We have endless entitlement programs mandating the majority of government spending that cannot be touched, and now we have madatory barrowing for all its spending so that the economy will not collapse.

So it really matters little what administration comes down the pike. All of the decisions have been made apparantly. The only question becomes, at what point will the barrowing lead to the nations demise?