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Title: Editorial blasts Trump for giving Democrats 'exactly what they want' on debt ceiling deal
Source:
Fox News
URL Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201 ... want-on-debt-ceiling-deal.html
Published: Sep 7, 2017
Author: Fox News
Post Date: 2017-09-07 08:11:21 by Stoner
Keywords: None
Views: 2565
Comments: 10
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board on Wednesday wrote a blistering critique of President Trump’s decision to overrule congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary to cut a deal with Democrats to raise the federal debt ceiling “for a mere three months.” The editorial, titled ‘The Pelosi-Schumer-Trump Congress,’ blasted Trump for giving Democrats “exactly what they want, which is to set up an even steeper fiscal cliff on debt and spending in December when Republicans hope to be focusing on tax reform.” Trump sided with the Democratic leaders — “Chuck and Nancy,” as he amiably referred later to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — as they pushed for the three-month deal, brushing aside the urgings of GOP leaders and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a much longer extension. Republicans want that longer allowance to avoid having to take another vote on the politically toxic issue before the 2018 congressional elections. Aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters, “We had a very good meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.” He didn’t mention Republicans McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who also had been present. “We agreed to a three-month extension on debt ceiling, which they consider to be sacred, very important.” “I think the deal will be very good,” Trump added. The deal promises to speed the $7.9 billion Hurricane Harvey aid bill, which passed the House overwhelmingly Wednesday, to Trump’s desk before disaster accounts run out later this week. The debt ceiling and government funding extensions will be attached. The Journal wrote, "Part of the problem is that Congressional Republicans once again helped put themselves in this box. Congress can’t let the U.S. default on its debt, so the majority party has to raise the debt ceiling whether it likes it or not. The smart GOP play was to attach a long-term debt increase to some other must-pass legislation and get it over with. One and done." At first, in Wednesday’s Oval Office meeting, the Republicans lobbied for an 18-month debt ceiling extension, then 12 months and then six, but Trump waved them off, sources told the Associated Press. As Mnuchin continued to press an economic argument in favor of a longer-term deal, Trump tired of it and cut him off mid-sentence. Late Wednesday, with criticism pouring in from Republicans, Mnuchin himself made a rare appearance in the Air Force One press cabin, as the president traveled back to Washington from North Dakota, to defend the deal. “Our No. 1 priority was getting money for Harvey. Let me very clear: That’s the president’s number one agenda and we accomplished that,” Mnuchin insisted. Mnuchin also claimed several times that the president actually could have had a one-year package but didn’t want to lose the opportunity to raise military spending in new budget bills before then. Aides to Schumer and Pelosi responded with incredulous disbelief to this claim. Ryan slammed the Democrats’ demand for a three-month extension as “ridiculous and disgraceful.” He issued no public statement on the final deal. McConnell did not sugarcoat what happened when he addressed reporters a short time later. “In the meeting down at the White House, as I indicated, the president agreed with Sen. Schumer and Congresswoman Pelosi to do a three-month CR and a debt ceiling into December, and that’s what I will be offering based on the president’s decision,” McConnell said. “CR” refers to a continuing resolution, which will extend existing government funding levels into mid-December, when the prospect of an enormous new round of deal-making now looms. The move buys almost three months, until Dec. 15, for Washington to try to solve myriad other issues, including more funding for the military, immigration and health care, and a longer-term increase in the government’s borrowing authority to avoid a first-ever default. Adding the stopgap funding bill to the Harvey aid package would also immediately free about $7 billion in additional disaster funds. Schumer was as pleased in the aftermath. “The bottom line is, the president listened to the arguments,” Schumer said. “We think we made a very reasonable and strong argument. And, to his credit, he went with the better argument.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Well if anyone had hopes that DJT would correct the financial course of the nation, they can FORGET IT! The globalist/CFR/FED crowd are still firmly in charge ! Expect continued depreciation of the dollar !
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#1. To: Stoner, NWO Accomplished (#0)
It seems that the Republican Democrat Party has chosen financial collapse as their preferred method of terminating the USA. That way they can buy up assets at fire sale prices, using federal reserve notes that aren't worth much of anything anyway. Rise of the Global Empire, Great Depression II. It's a win win for the global elites.
I'm not going to belittle you. A great number of people hold the belief that we are careening into bankruptcy as a nation, only a few years away from utter collapse and calamity. The Democrats and Republicans just seem to ignore the concern and proceed on blythely, leaving people to imagine the worst. I certainly did. This post is to correct the record, to present the REAL financial picture of the nation (gleaned from the Flow of Funds report by the US Treasury, seconded by a Credit Suisse report on national wealth). The real status is not nearly as bad as you might think it is, and certainly nothing like the conditions that those who want to sell you gold and guns or partisan politics would have you believe. Here are the real numbers: The net national wealth of the United States AFTER government and private debt are taken out of gross national wealth, is $94.84 trillion. There are also potential (unexploited) natural resource assets totaling $45.7 trillion. Private debt in the USA is $12.7 trillion. Public debt comes in four flavors: the official national debt, of $19.84 Trillion, "Agency debt" (debt issued by federal agencies and federal NROs of $8.62 trillion, State government debt of $1.17 trillion, And local government debt of $1.85 trillion. So, the total government debt, all levels, is $31.18 trillion. When private debt is added to that, total American debt, public and private, is $43.88 trillion. That's a lot of money in absolute numbers, but that is upon a total national wealth of $138.27 trillion (plus reserve natural resources wealth of an additional $45.7 trillion). Put differently, the US, considered as a household, has an aggregate wealth (liquid and illiquid), of $183.97 trillion dollars. Our debt on that is $43.88 trillion, which is to say that we have a debt-to-wealth ratio of 31.7% or 23.8%, depending on whether or not you consider proven natural resource reserves to be part of the national wealth. So yes, in absolute numbers, $43.88 trillion is a lot of debt. But let's compare that to American households. The average American household has $132,500 of debt (mortgages included), and an median net wealth of $139,000. Which is to say, the debt to wealth ratio of American families, on average, is 48.8%. The average American family is in much, MUCH worse shape, debt-wise, than the United States as a whole. Now, of course, if a family's debt grows from the already high 48.8% to higher and higher ratios, eventually the debt growth will outstrip income. THAT is really the issue: when debt outstrips income and accumulates, eventually the family is driven into bankruptcy. From the gold-peddlers and gun-sellers and political we-can't-do-anything- because-we-are-going-broke! doomsayers, you would think that that is the state of affairs in America. But it is not true. The US GDP in 2016 was $18.57 trillion. It is on track to grow 3% in 2017, perhaps more. That means that the economy - the national wealth of the USA - will grow by $557.1 billion this year. The government deficit this year is expected to be $603 billion. So, the national debt will grow, by $45.9 billion. Does this mean that the gross debt-to-wealth ratio of the US will also grow (by .0002%)? No, it doesn't. It doesn't because GDP measures the active economy. It does NOT include the latent growth in the value of capital. So, all of those reserve natural resources? They grow in value each year, as does the value of held real estate and held asset, but none of THAT gets included in the GDP, because it's not "product", it's unrealized capital appreciation. Housing, for example, has increased an average of 0.7% per year in value since 1980, including the worst housing crash in American history. Real estate accounts for nearly 50% of the national wealth, so that innate 0.7% per year growth in the value of real estate translates to about a 0.35% growth in national wealth. Remember that the growth of the debt over the increase in GDP amounts to .0002% of national wealth. So, the value of the growth of assets vastly outstrips the increase of government debt, by three orders of magnitude. So no, the amounts of debt we're adding each year are not, in fact, driving us inexorably towards national default and bankruptcy. The net wealth of the country continues to increase considerably faster than the total public debt. (And in truth, public debt is an ASSET to the its purchaser, so in reality the absolute cost to the overall economic structure of the country really only lies in the interest payment.) None of this is to make us feel good about wasting money. That's a separate discussion. The merits and demerits of that on which we spend public money on are a very legitimate subject for discussion. What this is, is the injection of honesty and objectivity into that discussion. It is legitimate to oppose, say, flood relief to Houston on philosophical grounds. It is NOT legitimate to oppose it on the grounds that we are breaking the bank, because that is not true. It is not even close to being true. It is also injecting some stone cold reality into the hysterical theatrics of certain politicians who want to stampede us into taking actions that are un-Christian or poorly thought on, on the grounds that we face a "crisis" in public finance. We don't. Making one up to generate undeliberative action is dishonest. Also, there are those in the financial and commodities and prepper industries who make their personal fortune peddling the impending apocalypse, and using the public's poor understanding of the true nature of our national finances to stampede people into buying things they don't need for the PURPOSE of surviving an "impending" financial armageddon that is, in fact, not on the cards AT ALL EVER we were to continue to follow our current practices. Remember - the national wealth is growing much faster than the budget deficit. We are not eating all of the seed corn. We spend too much money ON CORRUPTION. The problem is the corruption, the bad equipment, the useless programs, the philosophy of what we're doing (is arming Muslims a good idea?). That's where the debate should be. To say that we "can't" do thus and so "because we're about to go broke and drown our descendants in debt" is a lie. I don't think that most people who say and believe those things think they are telling a lie. I think people have been bamboozled by politicians and peddlers - AGAIN - about a financial fact pattern that doesn't really exist. This post is an antidote to that. Let's focus on the actual programs, because it's not true that "we can't afford to pay for it". Yes we can. We can afford to do what we are already doing now FOREVER, and the country will still get wealthier, because national wealth is rising at a rate three orders of magnitude higher than national debt. But wait! I hear the bugles blowing from the cranky fringe. UNFUNDED MANDATES! I have left out UNFUNDED MANDATES! The UNFUNDED MANDATES, stretched over an infinite horizon, amount to $90.% TRILLION! THAT sure destroys everything I have said above! Those must all be accounted for! Yes, they must. But the thing about future obligations is that you reserve for them, to the extent you can, and you must remember that the same analysis above applies. Unfunded mandates, such as medicare and social security, do not suddenly all come due in a year. Rather, they are very predictable over a perpetual span of time. There are so many people, who will need so many benefits. At the CURRENT rate of income off the CURRENT economy, they are indeed, unfunded. We have not set aside $90.5 trillion in Al Gore's idiotic "lock box". We pay as we go. The piece that the Unfunded Mandates! alarmists leave out - either maliciously or, usually, because they don't really understand economics, is that those mandates come out of an economy that itself grow and produces additional income over time. So yes, the unfunded mandates, over an infinite horizon, are $90.5 trillion, but the economy itself, the GDP, over that same infinite horizon, is $1.3 QUADRILLION dollars...which places the unfunded mandates at 6.96% of the economy, spread over the same time horizon. That is never going to break the back of the economy. Not ever. The purpose of my post is not to say that all is well. It IS to say that all is a whole lot better than the alarmists pretend, and that we do, in fact, have the time and the economic strength to consider, for example, HOW to provide universal health care and hurricane relief, not WHETHER we can AFFORD to. We can. I don't want to WASTE MONEY on corruption and on unsound things (like giving arms to Muslims or giving sex change operations to members of the Army). But that is what we should be doing: talking about what and why or why not each thing. That we're teetering on the brink of financial oblivion, as a negotiating tactic, is an utter lie, completely untrue. It has no basis in fact. I wanted to make sure that you had these real economic facts and considerations in hand, so that when you are considering, say, financial aid for the victims of the hurricane, you don't swallow the lie that if we do this our grandchildren will be living in cardboard boxes and eating Alpo. The opposite is true. If we spend the sort of money we are talking about for Houston, the national wealth will nevertheless continue to INCREASE. We are not close to choking that off. So let's be honest and realistic and sober, and not let ourselves get stampeded by liars.
Great post. I didn't want you think no one was reading it. OTOH, it was a bit long for a forum where 80% of the posters can't seem to read even the first paragraph of an article, let alone a post about it. : )
Analyses that are meaty require time to write. I'll take the time. Writing it out forces me to be precise, because I know that various precise minds here will pick at whatever they don't like. I also know that there will be the hurricane of "ideological heresy" wails. And there will be the even more deafening silence of those who don't read it. Nevertheless, if I get through to a few minds, this site will be a treasure, because people will realize they can get an analysis here that cannot be found anywhere else. FreeRepublic started going downhill the day they banned me.
I'll admit that you are the master of the meaty retort. At least on days where you aren't too busy for posting.
Or on days when my eyes wall over with murderous rage. Then I can become a poop-flinging baboon, and that doesn't do anybody any good.
There are no replies to Comment # 7. End Trace Mode for Comment # 7.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestThe globalist/CFR/FED crowd are still firmly in charge ! Expect continued depreciation of the dollar !
#2. To: hondo68 (#1)
It seems that the Republican Democrat Party has chosen financial collapse as their preferred method of terminating the USA.
#3. To: Vicomte13 (#2)
#4. To: Tooconservative (#3)
#5. To: Vicomte13 (#4)
#7. To: Tooconservative (#5)
At least on days where you aren't too busy for posting.
Replies to Comment # 7.
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