Notes on the Debt Ceiling Debate

The current debate over the deficit and the raising of the debt ceiling are very complex issues and have kept a lot of politicians busy these past few months.  Republicans and Democrats arguing in public and private.  The media adding to the confusion with a daily rehash of speculation and guesswork which presents the issues from the view of ‘what’s current’ rather than from an historical perspective which would add some substance to people’s understanding. 

The American people are a little confused about the discussions taking place between the two extremes of ‘financial doom’ and ‘don’t worry-be happy’.  But I think most people see themselves as far removed from this economic issue and have limited background information which would be helpful to making decisions.

So in an effort to clarify some of this I offer the following  points.

1. Everybody feels the United States debt is too high, about 11.9 trillion dollars. 

2. Many people feel that current tax rates are too high though they are the lowest they’ve been in years.  According to writer Pat Garofalo in a June 1, 2011 article for Think Progress; for a family of four the “average income tax rate under Reagan in 1983 was 11.06 percent.  Under Clinton in 1992, it was 9.18 percent. And under Obama in 2010, it was 4.68 percent.  In fact, in 2009, Americans paid their lowest taxes in 60 years”.

3. A lot of people feel that current government spending is out of control but most political observers agree that the 8-years of the former Bush Whitehouse and the Republican controlled congress created much of the current debt by passing huge tax cuts, engaging in two wars that were not paid for through the normal budget process, passing a Medicare Drug Benefit program whose estimated cost continued to climb after passage, and the deregulation of financial institutions that lead to the global financial meltdown of 2008.

4. The debt also increased by the passage of the Stimulus Program which used billions of dollars to bailout financial institutions, saved the US Auto Industry, and slowed the possibility of a global financial meltdown.  The New Yorker Magazine stated in September 2010 that “by any reasonable measure, the $800-billion stimulus package passed in the winter of 2009 was a clear, if limited, success..and a recent study by Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder, economists from, respectively, Moody’s and Princeton, argues that, in the absence of the stimulus, unemployment would have risen above eleven percent and the G.D.P.  would have been almost half a trillion dollars lower. The weight of the evidence suggests that fiscal policy softened the impact of the recession, boosting demand, creating jobs, and helping the economy start growing again.

5. Since March 1962, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times, according to the Congressional Research Service. Ten of those times have occurred since 2001  but this year there is considerable Republican opposition.

6. The Obama Administration says an agreement must be reached before August 2 in order to avoid a massive financial default on the money that the US has borrowed.   According to a May 18, 2011 article by CNNMoney,  “if lawmakers fail to raise the ceiling this year, they will have two choices, both awful.  They could either cut spending or raise taxes by several hundred billion dollars just to get through Sept. 30, which is the end of the fiscal year. Or they could acknowledge that the country would be unable to pay what it owes in full and the United States could effectively default on some of its obligations.  At a minimum, a default could hurt U.S. bonds, the dollar and investors' portfolios. "Our bond market and stock market would crash," said former Congressional Budget Director Rudolph Penner.

7. The Republicans want to solve the problem by cutting the spending on  Social Security, Medicare, Education, and other programs…  But no tax increases.

8. The Democrats, including the president, want to solve the problem by cutting spending and raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

9. Many of the Republican candidates running for the GOP’s presidential nomination have stated that there really isn’t any cause for alarm and that the democrats are manufacturing  the crisis as a way to increase taxes.

10. As of Tuesday 19^th of July there were about 3 different proposals to solve the problem from the Republicans, the Democrats, and some smaller political factions.

jt