Fed Raises Debt Ceiling to $9 Trillion

Bennett cartoonA mere month and a half after realizing that the federal bank account was going to start sending out rubber checks, the Senate has stepped in and narrowly (52-48) passed a bill raising the borrowing limit (every man, woman and child alive now owes a mere $30,000 apiece). From the Associated Press:

The Senate voted Thursday to allow the national debt to swell to nearly $9 trillion, preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes.

The vote came a day after Treasury Secretary John Snow warned lawmakers that action was “critical to provide certainty to financial markets that the integrity of the obligations of the United States will not be compromised.”

The debt limit increase is an unhappy necessity _ the alternative would be a disastrous first-ever default on U.S. obligations _ that greatly overshadowed a mostly symbolic, weeklong debate on the GOP’s budget resolution.

Not surprisingly, the Senate was mostly empty during debate, as Democrats were only interested in gleefully bashing the fiscal irresponsibility (“When it comes to deficits, this president owns all the records,” Harry Reid) without offering a fiscally conservative alternative of their own making. And Republicans simply just don’t give a crap.

But anyways, $30,000… better take out a loan.

Stephen VanDyke

I've published HoT along with about 300+ friends since 2002. We're all Americans who are snarky and love our country. I'm a libertarian that registered Republican because I like to win elections. That's pretty much it.

15 Comments

  1. I post a lot about The national Debt…

    It is an absolute embarassment. In 1994 when The Republicans swept to power the Federal Debt was 4.75 trillion dollars…

    What have they done?

  2. This is disgusting, but it’s not as bad as we could be. A lot of European countries have about 60% of their GDP expressed in terms of debt. When Bush took over, it was 34% and now it’s 37%, which is plenty dismaying but not as bad as them.

  6. Personally, I love it. I can’t wait for it to get to 101%. That will be a blast! Call me perverted, but I just want to see how high it can go! It’s not like anything is going to be done about it anyways. Might as well enjoy the ride and laugh when the stupid people are punished for it. Frankly, I like to see people get their just deserts.

  7. It was off a news article I read on CNN.

    Well, this does support your position, but still it’s not clear which is the legitimate figure.

    Lies, damn lies and statistics…

  10. The LP CAN’T use this issue to their advantage when the party platform advocates DEFAULTING on the national debt!!! I suspect this is why they have decided to stay quiet about this particular issue.

  11. Defaulting on the National Debt is such a stupid idea that I have no idea how anyone of The Platform Committee could ever agree to something like that. The entire National Platform needs to be abolished and re-written by people who want to get Libertarians elected to office.

    Stuart you are using the wrong number partner. There is a lot of mis-information put out by the politicians. The current Federal debt is about 8.2 or 8.3 trillion dollars. This figure does not count all of its various unfunded future liabilities; these account for another 70- 75 trillion depending on whose statistics you use…

    Ouch…

  14. This is the best collection of economic statistics, taxation statistics, and size of gevernment statistics, with lots of easy to understand graphs and pictures.

    http://mwhodges.home.att.net/#health

    Current debt = 03/16/2006 $8,271,005,203,336.67

    If you think about it this way, we have 729 billion of partying to go before we have to raise it again…should take 1-2 years. No worries.