Why doesn't anyone make this argument about the debt?

[Hamlette]

20% of the federal budget goes to pay interest on the nat'l debt.

We roll back the tax cuts for the wealthy, pay off the debt and EVERYONE gets a 20% reduction in their taxes.

I never hear it and I know there is some argument that some debt is good but 20% of our budget?

[lcordero]

1. the only person that debt is good for is for the person

collecting the debt.

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. And the debt is underwritten by U.S. Treasury bonds....

and take a guess at who holds U.S. Treasury bonds?

Foreign governments and the wealthy of this country. And that includes the Bush family.

[mac2]

5. No one mentions the British banks off-shore that have our...

our corporate and plundered treasury. We go broke (over the wars,etc.). They get our money and they're our friends!!

Something is very wrong.

[BradCKY]

2. I think about it all the time

A medicare bill that doesn't help most seniors but SURE helps drug companies, that went from 400 billion to over 500 billion.

I need not mention the other "compassionate conservative" programs that on face value look like they help people, but for some reason end up benefitting corporations more.

[mac2]

4. The World Bank make a huge profit off our debt...

now let me see...who would that be?

[myopic4141]

6. We were buying down the debt in the last three Clinton years and

against the general wisdom, we were able to continue unprecedented growth. This meant that government could pay for the general population safety net; however, Conservatives prefer a corporate safety net to a population safety net and needed to destroy the governments ability to pay for one. That is why they cut taxes the way they did rather than pay down the debt.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. Good point.

It seems to me that theere is a disconnect with people regarding the DEFICIT and the national debt and folks forget that the two are different. As Myopic accurately stated, the debt WAS being payed down, freeing up international capital and making it easier for business to move forward.
I am not an economist, and i am sure there is at least one here on DU so correct me if i am wrong, but ALL debt MUST be underwritten whether it is your credit card or a nations unbalanced budget. Someone has to say "Ill put the money up for that" and just like your diminishing credit line, a large national debt makes money scarce and/or more expensive for EVERYONE.

[sweetheart]

8. The argument is not about the debt

The argument is derived from the root: That a corporation of
interests is founded to perform its economic function professionally,
and as an organization of contracts secondly. A software company
is firstly chartered to be experts in software design and manufacture, secondly
as stock market captial. THe problem is that
the neocons, have waged a business-school propaganda war about the
nature of business, that the above definition is perverted to
"organization of contracts".

This root perversion frames all subsequent republican argument about
economics. Through this financialization lens, we accept by the
GDP measure a root redefinition of the relationship of economic
institutions away from competence, as the business line competence
is seconded permanently to the financial engineering department.

What is most worrysome about the debt, and this whole discussion
about tax breaks, is its gross misrepresentation of the purpose of
government. The economic religion suggests that the debt is priming
the pump, and that it is jumpstarting the economy, whilst concealing
that the debt running up is military, and that the economic stimulus
that should be spread across all economic sectors is concentrated
on military.

We have to challenge the entire argument root and branch.
The debt is just part of teh deeper equation being sold with this
package of economic jargon. The very corporate structure itself
subverts independence, and strategic competence. The army of
clones all dies when the dear leader dies.

The corporate charter is to trade ethically, and the accounting is
just adding up sums. The national debt, itself such a sum, lies
beneath the frame of trade itself, by the foreign interests that
own said debt, and that by institutinally undermining the ethics
of symbiotic trade, the spirit is undermined.

The republican charter allows the corporate facade to appear coherent
whilst stripping out all the assets, dumbing the entire thing down
to sell it off... hiring no creative or dynamic people, but the
clones of institutionial management. All the while they take out
every last bit of coin from the operation.

Since the law has undermined the very prnicipal that the first and
foremost purpose of the business was to trade competently, the
financialization of business has simply disguised a massive massive
theft of public goods, trust, and goodwill.

The debt, is just a symptom of a bank robbery of stupendous proportions.