Senate Budget Plan Could Lift Debt Limit (By $664 billion)

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seeking to avoid further fights about budget deficits in an election year, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday introduced a plan that would raise the government's debt limit by $664 billion.

Sen. Don Nickles, a Republican from Oklahoma, told the budget committee, which he chairs, in his budget blue print that the current debt limit of $7,384 billion may have to be increased sometime before the end of this fiscal year.

The committee began discussing the plan, which if it were to be carried out would set the stage for a limited debate on raising the debt limit by $664 billion, which Nickles estimates would be enough. Earlier on Wednesday, a Treasury Department official said the current borrowing limit is expected to be hit late in the budget year.

Don Hammond, Treasury's fiscal assistant secretary, told a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee he thought the cap would be pierced in the latter part of the budget year -- an ``August, September time frame.'' The government's fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

more..................

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-congress-debt.html

[Khephra]

1. kick

[kysrsoze]

2. Well, that's just fucking great.

How high can we possibly go?

[Khephra]

3. It just goes to show you

In the old days this thread would have been hit 242 times by now.

These days it's old news, nothing unexpected.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. Like when you max out a credit card

They raise the limit. Except here, they don't plan on paying it back.
(In their lifetime).

The argument about 3-4 mos ago was something like, a 200 billion deficit would be OK, since it will stimulate the economy, people will go back to work & it will get paid back right away. This along with WMD and everything else is being forgotten about & all we have left is a hang over.

This is an amazing example of "clear cutting" or "strip mining" of a civilization that hasn't been seen since Stalin.

[jmcgowanjm]

5. You mentioned Stalin. Like the USSR, I believe the US

has introduced a Command Economy.

How else to describe this:
The US Economy is not that robust and yet
scrap steel is hard to come by.

Or interest rates are low, but refi's are stagnating.

Or Gold $ are dropping but Copper and Soybeans
and Crude are holding up.

Mass Layoffs reach record in January
but Employment index drops.

Producer Price Index delayed over 2 weeks now.
When's the BLS going to release it?

Just remember the State run Bread Stores in
the USSR. The price is x but the bread may not be there
and long lines when it is.

[waldenx]

6. Will Kerry show up?

this is an extremely important issue so the odds are that Kerry will be nowhere near D.C.

[Bandit]

7. Don't worry this is your grand children's future they are destroying not

yours or theirs. They expect the Rapture so don't care one wit how high the debt gets. They will never have to repay any of it and they expect to live high on the hog for the remainder of their lives. It is the Republican way. There just ain't no adults allowed in that GOP Party of theirs. I have never witnessed such total abandonment of economic principles.