Why The Congress Cannot Balance The Budget

reply to post by DarthMuerte


what about CAFR [ats search alone will provide lots of links] darth?
going by the numbers for 2000 alone and assuming these funds kept off the books by politicians at all levels
[jesse ventura managed to squeeze out some to avoid raising taxes when he was a govenor btw]
haven't risen since then , there is more than enough to pay off the national debt and then some [we are talking over 60 trillion dollars the public is not aware about, and the us debt is approx. 16.25 trillion www.usdebtclock.org...]

[video] CAFR The Biggest Game in Town, page 1
www.abovetopsecret.com...
The One Thing they will not discuss, CAFR..., page 1
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The acknowledged debt is 16+ trillion, but there are another 250+ trillion in unfunded liabilities. We have to cut spending and unfunded mandates/liabilities should be made illegal.

Another related video and a link. Not even if you shut the whole government, all government departments down for one whole year you can't balance the budget. So cutting spending won't cut it. (pun intended)



And here's a link that explains the same thing.

I apologize for what you’re about to read

When the US federal government spends money, expenses are officially categorized in three different ways.

Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related to government– the US military, Air Force One, the Department of Homeland Security, TSA agents who sexually assault passengers, etc.

Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, VA benefits, etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid.

The final category is interest on the debt. It is non-negotiable.

Mandatory spending and debt interest go out the door automatically. It’s like having your mortgage payment autodrafted from your bank account– Congress doesn’t even see the money, it’s automatically deducted.

In Fiscal Year 2011, the federal government collected $2.303 trillion in tax revenue. Interest on the debt that year totaled $454.4 billion, and mandatory spending totaled $2,025 billion. In sum, mandatory spending plus debt interest totaled $2.479 trillion… exceeding total revenue by $176.4 billion.

For Fiscal Year 2012 which just ended 37 days ago, that shortfall increased 43% to $251.8 billion.

In other words, they could cut the entirety of the Federal Government’s discretionary budget– no more military, SEC, FBI, EPA, TSA, DHS, IRS, etc.– and they would still be in the hole by a quarter of a trillion dollars.

reply to post by TheBandit795

This is the same point made by the video in my OP. You are exactly right, cutting defense as liberals are wont to do won't do it, even if we close the whole dept of defense. Entitlement spending is strangling us, we must cut it.

Mmmm... cut entitlement! Lets look at that for a moment.

I have seen a lot of posts here and elsewhere basically painting those on food stamps and SS as spongers and leeches etc. However, they don't seem to want to think about why the number of people on food stamps and SS payments has risen so drastically. I'm sure many of those on welfare payments would rather be earning a better amount and being able to pay their way, and buy the things they want, rather than subsisting on meager handouts.

This has been building for a long, long time, from one administration to another, watched over by both big parties, yet you don't have to be some ivy league schooled economist to see the problem.

For example..... Big corporate players found they could save huge amounts of money, and thus increase profits, by sending all the jobs overseas to "emerging" economies in developing nations. The products still get made, just at a fraction of the cost they used to be made at.
However, the downside, after years of job off-shoring, is that those people who used to do that work, are now either unemployed and unable to get work (due to increased off-shoring) or are working for lower wages. Thus, the amount of tax revenue being collected drops dramatically.

Now comes another big kicker... the goods are now all made overseas and shipped in for consumption. As the domestic citizens who used to make them are on lower wages, the time comes where they can no longer afford to be the good little consumers they used to be, so stop buying. Meanwhile, the executives at those corporations that sacked all the domestic workers and sent the jobs overseas, get big bonuses for increasing profitability for the big shareholders, usually big banks.
They don't care about long term plans, just the short term, get rich quick and screw everyone else outlook, even as the dire consequences of their "strategy" spirals out of control and plunges the entire economy into ever increasing debt to just maintain the illusion of an economy.

There wouldn't have to be huge "entitlement" spending, if not for the greed and short sightedness of those in power, who after all don't usually have to suffer the austerity they decide to bring in to give the illusion they are trying to turn the situation around. The politicians and bankers have used the big reset button called "World War" twice before to cover their tracks and will do so again if they need to, but hey, even that is good for business... for some!

reply to post by Britguy
What you have said is true. America will never recover if industry is not returned to our shores. Many argue that we cannot compete in a global economy. I say "hogwash!" We can compete, but we don't have to. The US accounts for 35% of the entire world's economy. We can take our ball and go home. We can require the government to only buy American made products built in America by Americans. We can enact tariffs and protectionist policies. We can drill our own oil, use our own natural gas and coal. We have practically every single resource we need in the short and mid-term right within our own borders. We can send all of the illegals home and require that only American citizens be hired in America. We can fix our nation, but we never will.

Until we rid ourselves of the debt based society we live in nothing can ever be done. You can cut everything and still come up short.

Fractional Reserve banking/ the fed are the culprit. Encourages mal-investments, every country in the world is facing a similar crisis. The solution is to always take everything from the people. Our entire economic model relies on debt and can not function without it. Austerity is not the solution. The budget will never, ever be balanced, and under our current system it would hurt more than it helps.

reply to post by macaronicaesar

Excellent points there. Fractional reserve banking and the debt based economy are interrelated. We have a debt based economy due, in large part to fractional reserve banking. FR banking means that non-existent money is being lent out as real money.

reply to post by havok


Hi guys. I have noticed over the last couple of years a growing sense of hatred and blame to as what some posters call "rich old white men." In fact they just used it again on CNN. If you notice the term it has classism, ageism, racism, and sexism in the term. In short it fits the perfect scape goat for the so called minorities.
and Female
A couple of decades ago maybe even 3 or 4 decades ago the Federal Government needed more money. Their answer was to confiscate the railroad retirement fund. The problem with that was the railroad workers came straight out and said they would shut down the railroads and bring this country to its knees. The Government backed off.

So my question is this. With the growing hatred being fostered against what is called rich old white men and the inability of the government to continue to pay for its freebies for minorities if the government were to confiscate all the pensions, stocks, investments, properties, and bank accounts of the so called rich old white men would that be enough to pay off a fair amount of the debt? If they would try it with railroad workers who could fight back why would they not try it with old men who have little ability to fight back especially with the backing of the so called minorities, Black, Hispanic, Gay, and Female? Do you think it would provide them with enough money to stave off the collapse?

Hi JI. The answer is NO. If the government completely confiscated all of the money of those "rich old white men", it would run the country for ~ 2 weeks.

reply to post by DarthMuerte

Thanks for the response. I hope most people realize it but i doubt it. I suspect that was true during WW2 when Hitler initially started robbing the Jews. His claim was they were responsible for all the problems and they had the money to save the country. It did give him a lot more money to spend though.