The National Debt Ceiling

Richard Feynman famously said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” The monetary policies of those “experts” have driven up the national debt to astronomical levels buying votes from stupid and gullible voters. Any person with three brain cells to rub together knows that if your income is $X then you spend something less than $X. But economics “experts” like to make this harder than it is.

As an example, the Washington Examiner published a good article examining the impact of unfathomable debt. As usual the experts ignore the fact that Congress – many Congresses controlled by both parties – created the problems and generally create more problems pretending to address the problems they created in the first place. Much of our inflation problem, for instance, has been caused by three years of runaway spending. As reported in the New York Post,

“Two years in, it’s clearer than ever that my economic plan is working.” That was President Joe Biden’s borderline insane response to the latest inflation data. 

Working?!? Yes, the latest data pegs CPI at “only” 6.5%. Yes, it’s a decline month on month — a mild one driven partly by the fact that warmer winter weather (and thus lower energy costs) is giving punished consumers a smidge of breathing room. 

But even that small comedown (which still leaves the rate near historical highs!) masks the true extent of the damage Bidenomics has done. And the fact that it’s still so high proves Biden’s policies are doing ever more damage. 

Overall, inflation is up a hideous 13.7% since Biden took office. (Compare that to 3.6% over the same period in the first Trump term.) It has stayed at or above 5% for 20 straight months.

And December’s “low” number still saw food prices rise 10.4%; the average mortgage payment is now 36% higher than it was 12 months ago.

Similarly, Breitbart recently opined,

“Today’s historic inflation is the chit that’s been looming due for years of fiscal profligacy and easy money that politicians have said is “cost-free.” It’s a black eye for Democrats, because it directly results from their Keynesian fiscal religion and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) madness.

“Today’s painful inflation should put a nail in the coffin of MMT, the belief held (at least in practice) by many Democrats that deficits don’t matter, because money grows on trees—or at least on Federal Reserve printers. Indeed, the inflation cost of MMT is proving high and painful. This philosophy is also responsible for the federal debt hitting $32 trillion, the net interest on which threatens to be a massive drag on the economy moving forward.

“The decreasing value of the dollar further discredits the big-government approach to managing the economy. Next time the government calls for some massive social spending program, small businesses will be wary. ‘We tried that approach already,’ Americans can say, ‘and it resulted in runaway inflation, falling real incomes, and decreased living standards.’”

As threatened default looms, the poltroons in Congress are busy continuing to feather their own nests. Sheila Jackson Lee, for instance, has proposed legislation to make “white supremacy” a hate crime, as it is more of a threat to the nation than the drunken spending of Congress. Rather than focusing on trying to help the American people, our once trusted institutions instead “cook the books” to keep the Marxists in power.

Just the News reported,

“A recent string of errors and apparent discrepancies in federal statistics has raised concerns that such metrics, long regarded as irreproachably nonpartisan and credible, may have fallen prey to manipulation in favor of the incumbent Democratic Party.

“The three most glaring recent examples of such statistical misfires are:

• • the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ reported overestimate of second quarter job growth by a sizable margin;
  • the Census Bureau’s population overcounts of blue states and undercounts of red states — in a reapportionment year [this resulted in fewer House seats for Red states than the unbiased data indicates should have occurred];
  • the apparent disappearance of 50,000 asylum applications from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).”

The “gang of twenty” Republicans forced McCarthy to at least consider The Fair Tax, which replaces the evil income tax with a national sales tax. All the usual antibodies are out in full force predicting doom and despair if such a law is passed. Of course, the establishment in the global epicenter of stupid dislike the Fair Tax. It hinders their ability to hide all those hidden taxes from the people. Most economists agree that with all the hidden taxes, Americans generally pay about 50% in taxes. Biden says the Fair Tax will hurt the middle class by raising taxes on things like food and gas. (No one has done more to raise the prices of those items than Biden.) They ignore the fact that income, estate, excise, gasoline, and other federal extortions will go away. The Fair Tax also limits the Government’s ability to use taxation to manipulate the populace. It is high time to separate social behavior manipulation policies from taxation to fund the legitimate role of government. (There are a couple of legitimate roles; I am not an anarchist.)

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If the poltroons in Washington think something is a good idea, it is probably bad for the American people. If the “experts” think something is a bad idea, it’s probably good for the American people. The more the media and politicians screech, the more it is probably a good idea. The sound of scalded cats is the sound of politicians losing power.

As the debt ceiling debate looms again, “experts” are arguing about whether the US will default on its debts. The Left is engaged in typical brinksmanship by threatening to cut social security, veterans’ pensions, the military, and other sacred cows. The Leftist propaganda arm of the Democrat party willfully and gleefully sidesteps the real issue. In the last two years, the US has brought in record tax revenues, even without the help of 87,000 new IRS, armed thugs. We do not have a taxation problem. We have a spending problem.

The federal government forcibly extracts $3.7T from citizen serfs. Yet we spend significantly more than that. Without yet another raise in the arbitrary debt ceiling, Janet Yellen threatens to cut off social security, veterans’ pensions, and other projects. The big government cabal (Republicans) and huge government cabal (Democrats) will use the emotional threat of a government shutdown, starving grandma, and hurting veterans to raise the debt ceiling and borrow more money we don’t have on projects and programs we could all live without. I have argued many times that 90% of federal spending is unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment and that the courts have been grossly negligent in not drastically limiting the federal bureaucracy; although, it looks like the Supreme Court is making some headway in emasculating some of that bureaucracy.

Don’t be fooled by the threat of the “experts” that the only way to balance the budget and avoid default is to cut spending on grandma, military preparedness, and veterans. Anyone with three firing brain cells knows there is a lot of fat an unnecessary spending that can be cut easily and should be cut first. The middle class is suffering from the delusional policies the Biden junta. When real humans (meaning not politicians) are having trouble making ends meet, do they cut spending on luxuries or necessities. Do not let the politicians on both sides of the aisle tell you the only way to balance the budget is to cut necessities while continuing wasteful spending on luxuries.

The other tactic of the big government and huge government politicians is threatening a government shutdown. I have experienced shutdowns three times, both inside and outside the government. They cut the government to “essential” personnel, and there is jockeying to determine who is and isn’t essential. My position is that we should probably permanently eliminate all non-essential personnel until the debt is paid off. “Non-essential” sounds like “unnecessary luxury” to me. But here is the rub: when the crisis is averted – always at the expense of the American taxpayer – all those non-essential personnel are brought back to work, and they are back paid for all the time they weren’t working! That’s right, those non-essential personnel get a paid vacation at our expense because the politicians do not care about the American people, our economy, or our future. I think that the robber barons in DC try to avoid a government shutdown because if we had a real Fourth Estate, it would be obvious that most of us could live quite happily without all that government.

Recall the scene in the movie Dave, when Dave is working with his accountant friend to find fat in the federal budget. You don’t need a .05mm pencil to trim federal east. You can do it with a big crayon with a flat side.

Regarding “luxuries,” Breitbart reported,

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Friday [23 December 2022] continued the annual tradition of celebrating “Festivus,” airing out his many grievances as it relates to government waste.

Paul’s 2022 Festivus report highlights $482,276,543,907 in government waste and includes $2.3 million used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an experiment involving injecting puppies with cocaine, $202,000 used by the Department of Defense (DOD) on Starbucks espresso machines, and $3 million for the construction of a Gandhi museum.

Paul identified half a trillion dollars in wasteful government “luxuries.” Most of this spending is probably unconstitutional, let alone unnecessary. Let’s also not forget that this is OUR money, not Congress’ money. If limousine liberals want to fund these projects they should do so with their money, not our money.

Patriot Alerts reported that,

In yet another last-minute attempt to avoid a government shutdown, both the Senate and the House approved a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill, which has frustrated many, including commentators, policy experts, and the general public.

“This bill is further proof that Republicans and Democrats can come together to deliver for the American people,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday before signing the bill into law.

Some, however, argue that the 4,155-page spending package (pdf) could not be in people’s best interest, especially when most of the members don’t know what they’re voting on.

One of the sharpest critics this year came from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which wrote an op-ed titled “The Ugliest Omnibus Bill Ever” on Dec. 20 after Congressional leaders unveiled the $1.7 trillion spending package.

“This is no way to govern in a democracy, but here we are,” the editorial board wrote, calling the spending bill the “worst in history.”

Here are some of the “necessities” that Congress funded with your money.

• • Funding for a brand new “Pandemic Czar” [there is no place for the term ‘Czar’ in a democracy]
  • $575 million towards ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health,’ including in areas where population growth ‘threatens biodiversity’ [read “federal dollars for abortions]
  • $1.2 million for centers that support LGBTQ students at a San Diego Community College District
  • $3 million towards the New York Historical Society’s ‘American LGBTQ+ Museum Partnership Project’ [tell me how the 10^th Amendment even makes this constitutionally permissible!]
  • Massive 14.1% ATF Budget Increase to Facilitate Biden’s [unconstitutional] Pistol Ban
  • $14.4 Million for ATF’s NTC Budget to Maintain it’s Illegal Near-Billion Record Gun Registry
  • $700+ Million in Funding Available to Bribe States to Pass “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation Laws
  • $750,000 to the “Translatin Coalition” [giving money to pople who hate us to keep hating us]
  • $65 million for restoration of Pacific Salmon Populations
  • $5,000,000 for the White House physician to use for COVID-19 response, including for rapid tests
  • $3 million for Bee-Friendly highways
  • $3.6 million for Michelle Obama Trail
  • $2 million for The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum
  • $2 million for MLK Labor, a labor organization working towards “social and economic justice” [you know that means more handouts from racists to racists!]
  • $1,500,000 for the COVID–19 American History Project
  • $200 million for a Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund [you know that means more handouts from sexists to sexists]
  • $477,000 for Equity Training for Teachers [that means more money for woke teachers to indoctrinate your children]
  • $300,000 per year for the Continuous Plankton Recorder

When you are celebrating this Christmas with your family amidst massive inflation for food, energy, and holiday presents, don’t forget the Republicans that made this all possible.

The nine House Republicans that voted yes: Liz Cheney (WY), Rodney Davis (IL), Brian Fitzpatrick (AL), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), Chris Jacobs (NY), John Katko (NY), Adam Kinzinger (IL), Fred Upton (MI), and Steve Womack (AR).

The 18 Senate Republicans that voted yes: Roy Blunt (MO), John Boozman (AR), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Susan Collins (ME), John Cornyn (TX), Tom Cotton (AR), Lindsey Graham (SC), Jim Inhofe (OK), Mitch McConnell (KY), Jerry Moran (KS), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Robert Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Mike Rounds (SD), Richard Shelby (AL), John Thune (SD), Roger Wicker (MS) and Todd Young (IN).

Yesterday [20 January 2023] a financial “news” show reported that each and every American “owns” $94,000 in federal debt. For a family of four, that is almost $400,000!

Despite what the “experts” will tell you, the solution to the debt ceiling issue is simple. We do not need to starve grandma or veterans. We do not need to shut down the government – although it’s not a bad idea. We do not need to disband the Army. The fes extract in $3.7T in revenue from the serfs. We should therefore spend $3T (or less) and plow the rest into paying off the debt – in 50 years! Just remove half a trillion dollars of graft that Rand Paul identified from the budget! Some pundits argue that even if we just capped spending, economic growth would by itself create a tax surplus that could be used to avoid default and pay off the debt. Don’t listen to the experts! They always lie when they promise you two hamburgers on Tuesday if you buy one for them today.

Do not raise the debt ceiling. Spend less than you make. Cut “luxuries” that are probably unconstitutional anyway.

My prediction, however, is that the Repugnant Republicans will once again betray the American people and cave into the Demonic Democrats and the media propaganda machine. After all, that’s what Republicans do best: betray their promises to the American people. The Marxists in the media are already starting the preemptive propaganda campaign to convince the sheeple that a government shutdown will cause a recession (that is already imminent due to Biden’s economic policies even without a shutdown). The Repugnant Republicans will succumb to pressure from lies about grandma, the sick, government shutdowns, shuttering of the military, veterans’ benefits, and other sacred cows. Logic, rationality, and fiscal responsibility will be slain on the altar of using tax dollars to buy votes. They will once again allow a raise in the debt ceiling with the feckless promise of cutting spending later. The cowardly and Wimpy Republicans will tell us that They will gladly pay us Tuesday for a hamburger today. It will be a significant hardship to me personally when the government stops paying my military pension, as it is a key element of my retirement planning, but do not let your elected “representatives” succumb to the pressure from the Leftists for additional unbridled spending and debt growth.