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My wife and I both have accounting degrees and we brainstormed about how you just get rid of a liability with "accounting tricks". Uh....
Now remember this is governmental accounting which is different from regular accounting-I won't go into that (my wife knows more about it than I do).
Back in the 90's the Republicans and Democrats came to an agreement on how to balance the budget. Aside from increasing revenue and streamlining the government as best they could they changed what is included in the figurin'. Granted things were way better off than they are now but keep this in mind. The set their own rules in how to measure how they are doing, a great thing to be able to do.
What isn't included in the budget/debt figures you are hearing?
Treasury bills outstanding (chiefly sold to the Chinese and Japanese now)
and
Government pensions ( not Social Security but bureaucrat's and military pensions)
There never really was a "balanced budget" but like I said things were much better handled. This $7,400,000,000,000 (look at that number LOOK AT IT!) figure still doesn't include those two items. Oh yeah and the postal service isn't in there either.
In an election year, so far, the Republican lead Congress has not raised the acceptable debt limit (another great thing to be able to do) and the US is in danger of DEFAULTING on its loans.
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