Something Needs to be done about NATIONAL DEBT NOW

[craychek]

Please excuse the rambling style of this post, I am in drie need of sleep at this moment.

Over bush's tenure as president, we went from 5.6 trillion in debt with a couple hundred billion surplus to 7.8 trillion in debt and 1.3 trillion more debt forecast over the next decade. Am I the ONLY ONE extremely worried by this?

Lets look at our debt and see why we are in such deep shit.

If I remember correctly, the IRS takes in 4-5 trillion dollars a year in taxes(correct me if I am mistaken on this or any other numbers please). notice how that's a little more than half our debt. Which means that if we paid all of the nation's taxes to the debt it would still take us two years to do it. And this isn't just debt owed to the citizens of the US, it's debt owed to other countries. Not only is this debt massively huge, but we are also paying INTEREST on this debt as well. I don't know about you, but paying any kind of interest on 7.8 trillion dollars is BAD.

The Math: 7.8 Trillion * annual interest rate of 1% = 78 Billion dollars a year

I'm pretty sure that the interest rate is slightly higher than 1%, but I'm using 1% because I don't know the real interest rate.

It's already getting to the point now that we will not be able to pay the interest and still have enough money to run the country.

Something has to be done about our national debt now, and some huge sacrifices will have to be made I'm afraid.

I'm talking about temporarily cutting funding to certain projects or government programs that are not serving a huge productive purpose, sort of like not buying steak at the grocery store when you don't have enough money. I'm talking about stuff like NASA, research into new military technology, scaling back bases world wide, scaling back government grants, etc. At this point I don't see how dropping some of these things is avoidable. Until we are able to reduce our debt and make our economy a little more stable some of these things will have to be put on hold. IF this doesn't happen our economy will eventually collapse because the government can no longer fund itself. The dollar will become worthless.

In my opinion the budget is the most important thing that needs to be taken care of at this point, and, honestly, I don't care if a Republican, Democrat, or Independent takes care of it. Hell it would be awesome if everyone worked to together to get the budget back on track, but what are the chances of that happening =P

Now if I'm totally freaking out for no reason say something, or if you have any comments or anything to add also say something.

[gmoney]

1. I'm concerned as well...

And to think at the start of *'s tenure, Greenspan said his biggest worry was paying off the national debt TOO QUICKLY.

Elimination of the estate tax is projected to cost least ANOTHER TRILLION dollars in lost revenue over 10 years... a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money.

I just can't see how ANY part of the current house of cards will be able to stand any sort of a disruption. America is in deep...

:scared: :banghead:

[punpirate]

2. If you want something to be done about it...

... NOW, I guess you're just going to have to write them a check. :)

The reality is that the people controlling the budget are using rising deficits to obtain an objective. Start screaming about that now, and you open up the opportunity for them to say, "we gotta cut the budget" (which some Republicans are now saying), which then gives them carte blanc to kill social spending. Any hopes of significant reductions in the military budget right now are without any foundation in reality.

The problem today is obvious--it's exactly the same situation as in the `80s--excessive tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations combined with excessive military spending. Without control of Congress by sensible people of any party, there's no hope of changing the first, and without changing the minds of the public and Congress critters about military spending, no party can change the second.

Cheers.

[cssmall]

3. Actually, I'm all for studying the death of this culture.

It'll be interesting I promise, most of you would love to read the findings, especially after all historical evidence points to the reasons being: too many loans paid out and taken from foreign sources,

[BillZBubb]

4. Why do you hate America?

Don't you realize that debt is not a problem when God-fearing, honorable Republicans are in charge? Debt is only to be lamented when corrupt, atheistic, socialistic Democrats are responsible--even if they are working to reduce it.

Get with the program, you evil-doer.