Ok, so I’m reading an article from The Washington Times about June 30th, 2010 being the 3rd-largest, single-day debt increase; marveling at the $166 BILLION dollar jump and trying to absorb the fact that my household’s share of just this increase works out to nearly $1,500!
Interestingly enough, the article went on to say:
Daily debt calculations jump and fall, and big shifts are common. But all three of the biggest one-day debt increases have occurred under the tenure of President Obama, and all of the top six have been in the past two years – an indication of just how quickly the pace of deficit spending has risen under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush.
Ignoring the implication equating Obama’s debt increases with Bush’s; the fact of the matter is that there is some truth to the fact that even if Bush had not pushed and gotten the original bailout bill during the last few months of his Presidency, he probably still would have been on this short list. But, what the article did not include was the actual list of those top six debt days they mentioned and I would really, really like to see that list.
While the writer admits that the top three spots belong to Obama, I can only assume that the fourth largest debt day belongs to Bush. But what about the fifth and sixth days? Who gets the credit/blame for those days?
Another question: What is the margin of growth between the six days? In other words, how much bigger than the fourth day is the third day? Or between the second and first days? What’s the scale between these days?
The White House responded to the event in typical fashion stating “…that big a jump is not the norm and that Mr. Obama has worked with the hand he was dealt by Mr. Bush.”
In other words, don’t blame Obama, blame Bush.
The CBO has estimated that in order to achieve Obama’s stated goal of stabilizing the debt and reducing the deficit to about 3 percent of GDP, taxes would have to be raised by 25%, spending cut by 20% or some mix of the two approaches. The White House responded by repeating their favorite lie touting expected savings benefits from the “long-term cuts in spending resulting from the new health care law.”
But none of the information above caused me to pick up my keyboard and start typing. No, what caused me to write this article was a sentence in the right in the middle of the story that jumped out at me:
June 30 is always a major day for new debt, since debt held by one part of the government to another – for example, IOUs to the Social Security trust fund – are rolled over, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of the Public Debt said.
Re-read the quote above again and see if you see what caught my eye.
You think you’ve got it?
Here’s a hint: “a spokeswoman for the Bureau of the Public Debt said.”
Bureau Of The Public Debt?
We’ve got one of those? And, they have a spokesperson?
So I pulled up my trusty Google search screen and typed in “Bureau of The Public Debt” and discovered that the Federal Treasury actually has a small agency within the Department of the Treasury called the Bureau Of The Public Debt. I’m sure that many people who are very much in the know will laugh at me, call me stupid and say “Of course there’s a Bureau Of The Public Debt, what an idiot you are!!!!”
But I’m betting I’m not the only one who didn’t realize that a complete bureau just for this purpose existed. A visit to their website is worth your time if only to pull up the actual day to day public debt total owed by this country. The website states that the bureau has the following purpose:
Our job is to borrow the money needed to operate the federal government and to account for the resulting debt. In a nutshell, we borrow by selling Treasury bills, notes, and bonds, as well as U.S. Savings Bonds; we pay interest to investors; and, when the time comes to pay back the loans, we redeem investors’ securities. Every time we borrow or pay back money, it affects the outstanding debt of the United States.
Interestingly enough, there is a quote on the front page of their site from Alexander Hamilton which goes like this: “The United States debt, foreign and domestic was the price of liberty.”
According to the “Our History” page of the website, the total debt after the Revolutionary War was just over $75 Million. Adjusted for inflation, that debt was worth just under $1 Billion of 2009 dollars.
That means that in one day, our government expanded the debt of the U.S. 166 times the cost of the Revolutionary War.
In one single day.
Hamilton argued for a central monetary system and worked against all odds and opposition to bring it into being. However, I wonder if he were alive today would he stand by his comment regarding the price of liberty.
From where I’m sitting his comment should be updated to read:
“The United States debt, foreign and domestic will be the death of liberty.”
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