Warning: Congress and the President might do something intelligent! Nah!

It takes only two things to keep people in chains:
The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders.

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Warning: Congress and the President might do something intelligent.

Trump Reportedly Backed Schumer’s Pitch To Eliminate Debt Ceiling Entirely

During his meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday, President Donald Trump supported a proposal from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to eliminate the need for Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling altogether, according to several reports out Thursday.

Schumer suggested such a deal in the meeting, and Trump agreed that it was a good idea, according to the Washington Post, Politico, and Reuters.

The two reached a “gentleman’s agreement,” a White House official told the Washington Post. Schumer said that Democrats would work on a proposal that could potentially come up for a vote in December, according to the reports.

First, let’s discuss what the debt limit doesn’t do. Contrary to popular myth, the debt limit doesn’t limit government spending.

It limits paying for what the government already owes.

Get it? Think carefully as I summarize the debt ceiling:

1. Congress authorizes a certain amount of spending
2. Federal agencies spend what Congress authorized
3. Then Congress refuses to pay creditors for the spending it had authorized.

That is the debt ceiling.

So dishonest Congresspeople who vote for a debt ceiling actually are voting to make America default on its debt payments — payments that Congress already had authorized — so that America can become a deadbeat nation, which would destroy our economy.

Yes, that is the debt ceiling.

If Congresspeople truly wished to reduce federal spending, that is exactly what they would vote for: A reduction in spending. But they are afraid to admit what they are doing.

 

And now Schumer and Trump supposedly have agreed heroically to pay the government’s bills. Isn’t that wonderful?

And the questions are: Will Congress agree to pay our bills? Will Trump change his mind?

Will there be yet another battle about paying our bills, in which Congress “reluctantly” agrees not to force America into deadbeat status, pays our bills, and sets yet another “debt limit,” so we can go through the same idiocy a few months in the future?

A plan to nix the need to vote on raising the debt ceiling could face opposition from Republicans. Conservatives in Congress regularly refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless it is paired with budget cuts.

Here is how that goes. Congress tells federal agencies, “We won’t let you pay for what we had authorized you to spend unless you somehow force us to authorize less in the future.

Anyone who thinks this makes sense, really should run for Congress. They would qualify in the dishonesty/stupidity criteria.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Thursday rejected the idea of eliminating Congress’ need to vote on raising the debt ceiling.

“There’s a legitimate rule for the power of the purse in Article 1 powers, and that’s something we defend here in Congress,” he said at a press conference Thursday.

Do you remember Paul Ryan, the genius who after years of thinking, came up with Obamacare replacements that would have deprived 12 million to 20 million people of health care insurance?

Well, he’s at it again. Let me translate his statement for you. It means: “We value ‘power of the purse,’ meaning government agencies can spend only what we authorize, but if they do spend what we authorize, we won’t pay for it.”

Congress merely is pretending that the spending it authorized is “unsustainable” (their favorite word) and by illegally and unconstitutionally refusing to pay its debts, it supposedly is being frugal and prudent.

We have no idea what “unsustainable” means in this context. A Monetarily Sovereign nation cannot run short of its own sovereign currency. It easily can pay any debt denominated in dollars, because it creates dollars, ad hoc, by the very act of paying bills.

So the entire debt ceiling affair is total nonsense, a combination of ignorance and outright lying. And now, maybe, MAYBE, Trump and the Democrats will get rid of it.

Nah! Don’t bet on it.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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THOUGHTS

•All we have are partial solutions; the best we can do is try.

•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money no matter how much it taxes its citizens.

•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..

•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.

•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.

•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)

•Deficit spending grows the supply of money

•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

•Progressives think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY