Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire debt ceiling update

I'll try harder next time.

Well, this is true. The fact is this whole hyper consumerism lifestyle we all so covet is built upon government spending and debt. There is plenty of money in the world to live well, but it would be a "live well" like your grandparents did in the 50s. A kind of "Ozzie and Harriett" or "Father Knows Best" of a nice simple home with one, maybe two cars, and enough consumer products to make life comortable. Not the four cars for a family of five, 3,500 square foot mini mansion, 200 guns in the gunsafe, and eating out every night kind of "living well" that we have come to know in the last 30 years with the tremendous expansion of government spending and debt creation.

And then there is the Ron Paul crowd. miles

Agree 100%, but I think that it began longer than 30 years ago. It began with the creation of the Fed in 1913 under Wilson, got a boost from FDR, and increased acceleration with LBJ and Nixon. We're just seeing the end game.

Did you know that 96% of all government debt has been created since 1971? What other event happened in 1971? I'll give you a hint, it occurred on the 15th of August, and it is celebrating its 40th anniversary next month.

I agree.

The end of the gold-exchange standard?

Oh, I know exactly what happened and that is why I said 30 years, although 40 would have been more accurate. By completely removing the gold standard, there was no limit. And as someone born in 1970 I can really see the difference between the way people live now, than how they did when I was a kid.

The average middle class person owns things, does things, and thinks in a way that only "rich" people did when I was a kid. And I didn't grow up poor. On the contrary, my dad was self employed and did very well. My dad made as much money in actual 1970s dollars as lots of these people now are making in debased 2000s dollars and we didn't do half the stuff these people do. Of course, he accumulated land.

Yep. Nixon closed the gold window and we suffered our third default on our obligations since 1913. Default is nothing new to the US Government.

I was 14 when it occurred, and remember it well. I still have reloading tools and boxes that have price tags on them from the early 70's, and looking at the difference in what they cost then and what they cost now is eye opening, to say the least.

That's what I thought but you know how us old men are, Swiss cheese for brains.

I remember Nixon on TV announcing the end. Didn't he also announce price and wage controls at the same time or was that another time? I know that price and wage controls lead to runaway inflation during Carter's rein.

Yes he did, and all that resulted from that were shortages. I expect the same from Obm@ when inflation gets increasingly bad, which it will at the start of QE III. I also expect something along the lines of a bank holiday, depending upon how bad it gets for the banksters, especially IRT the REO mess that they have been hiding.

now mike no fair bringing up the tax for folks that aren't good at math.....inflation


those of us growing up in the 60's realized we'd be rich if we just hit the 100K per annum !


course they didn't tell us by the time we did a decent car or truck would cost half of that!


btw were you one of the ones that's been recoing buying PMs?

and now you're telling us we're F'ed?????


man I can only hope you're 50/50 in your prognostications.


but my gut tells me you're batting a thousand


it does my heart good to see that some get it, but there's too few of you and it's too late.

I am not planning on pulling any money out, I am just posting what I have been hearing around here. I want Boehners feet held to the fire, but I have no faith in the GOP.

Visualize the debt

Well, yeah I've been recommending PM's, as that's the only thing that has no exposure to counterparty performance-or lack thereof. But that goes hand in hand with "we're F'd". Financially and fiscally we ARE F'd. That doesn't mean that life will end, it just means that it will get exponentially harder, and for some will result in a very large decline in their accustomed standard of living.

If you have protected yourself with metals, food etc., and aren't dependent upon .gov for your everyday sustenance, then you will more than likely come out OK, but it will take a few years, and .gov will not be going quietly into the night while the great reset is going on.

bugger off, Paddler. if we need the communist viewpoint, we'll ask for it.

OP, what they need to do is prove they're not stupid. forcing a humiliating bill on Obama...or even better forcing him to do this again before the election in 2012...is the best tactical use that can be made of this situation.

when you don't have the white house or the senate, your real world options....if you eliminate the option of looking like idiots....are somewhat narrowed.

the House has already passed a budget....which of course went nowhere in the Senate. what is going on now is largely theater.....and the public is seeing the GOP as the party of cut, cap and balance and the democrats as the party of continued tax, borrow and spend. it's important to play it out that way.

I completely understand the practicality of your point Steve. All I can say is that they better not do anything that extends past the election. Put in a bandaid, tell the people that we can't do the right thing while this president and Senate leadership is in office, and make it perfectly clear, "if you want to do the right thing and take measures that will fix the current fiscal problem that we have SEND US HELP NOW". Then hope for the best in the election.

If we can get more Tea Party folks in the Senate, take over the leadership there, keep the House, and at least not elect a true RINO as president, we can do the RIGHT thing. And I'll tell you what, if we DO regain power and the Rs fail to truly reduce the budget, the Republican Party is OVER. All the strategy in the world won't help any longer. And your worst fears of the third party crisis will come true.

You are precisely incorrect:

Economist Mike Kimel notes that the last five Democratic Presidents (Clinton, Carter, LBJ, JFK, and Truman) all reduced public debt as a share of GDP, while the last four Republican Presidents (GW Bush, GHW Bush, Reagan, and Ford) all oversaw an increase in the country�s indebtedness.

When Carter took office, the debt as a proportion of GDP was 35.8%. When he left office, it was 32.5%. Ronny ballooned that to 53.1%, and quadrupled our debt in actual dollars. In point of fact, RR oversaw the first $1 trillion dollar deficit. That's a legacy you can hang your hat on, don't you think? Then, after Clinton reduced the debt from $1.5 trillion to a mere $400 billion, GW increased it ten fold. When he left office, it was $4 trillion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms

So, once again, pull your head out of your ass. Who got us into this mess?

I think the Mack plan can really get traction and be the defining campaign issue....and if Romney would embrace it he could eliminate a lot of the suspicion about him....although I'd never trust him on the second amendment, any more than I would Chris Christie..

I'll repeat what I posted earlier. We are all in this and not rising of the debt ceiling will harm us all.

Previous post:

In spite of wishes, demands and hopes, the Federal budget will most likely continue to rise in the future (if for nothing else like wars or national disasters) due to inflation.

Example 1: Astronauts are either GS-12 or GS-13 civil service employees (unless they are in the military). IIRC, Neil Armstrong was a mild-level GS-13 when we walked on the moon.
- In 1969, the GS-12 salary range was $14,192 to $18,449 and the GS-13 salary range was $16,760 to $21,791.
- In 2011, the GS-12 salary range (adjusted for Houston COL) is $77,579 to $ #100,851, while the GS-13 salary range is $92,252 to $119,926.
- i.e.. labor costs have and will continue to rise as time passes.

Example 2: Health care costs will continue to rise. The DOD health care budget alone exceeds the TOTAL amount the US spends on intelligence and this includes the CIA, DIA, military branch intelligence agencies, NRO, NGIA, NCTC, etc. - and that�s a lot! Plus, we have the Veterans Affairs Department costs.
- Veterans are living longer than before due to improved health, better medical care, exercise, less smoking, etc. The bill for their medical care will increase each year.
- Today�s better medical care and quicker evacuation are saving the lives of combat wounded than in previous wars. These men and women (thankfully) are living and will need to be cared for with medical treatment and disability payments for a long time.
- This latter situation is described in a New York Times article entitled �Cost of Treating Veterans Will Rise Long Past Wars�. It is in insightful article, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/us/28veterans.html

Cost of Treating Veterans Will Rise Long Past Wars
By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON � Though the withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will save the nation billions of dollars a year, another cost of war is projected to continue rising for decades to come: caring for the veterans.

By one measure, the cost of health care and disability compensation for veterans from those conflicts and all previous American wars ranks among the largest for the federal government � less than the military, Social Security and health care programs including Medicare, but nearly the same as paying interest on the national debt, the Treasury Department says.

Ending the current wars will not lower those veterans costs; indeed, they will rise ever more steeply for decades to come as the population of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan expands, ages and becomes more infirm. To date, more than 2.2 million troops have served in those wars.

Studies show that the peak years for government health care and disability compensation costs for veterans from past wars came 30 to 40 years after those wars ended. For Vietnam, that peak has not been reached.

In Washington, the partisan stalemate over cutting federal spending is now raising alarms among veterans groups and some lawmakers that the seemingly inexorable costs of veterans benefits will spur a backlash against those programs.

Though there is currently strong bipartisan support for veterans programs, some budget proposals, including from Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, and Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, have called for trimming benefits for veterans and military retirees.

�Those proposals have been batted back so far,� said David Autry of the Disabled American Veterans. �But we�ve got more vigorous budget hawks today. If they are willing to bring the nation to the brink of insolvency, who knows what else they might do?�

Even if cuts to veterans programs do not occur, the current mood of budgetary constraint seems likely to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to make do without the large spending increases it has received from Congress in the recent past.

That means efforts by veterans groups to expand existing health care programs, provide additional benefits to Vietnam veterans or institute new research into things like traumatic brain injury or hearing loss will face difficult uphill battles, lawmakers and veterans advocates say.

�No one is thinking about the lifetime costs this country is responsible for,� said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Veterans� Affairs Committee. �I�m really worried.�

In a hearing before the panel on Wednesday, Heidi Golding, an analyst with the Congressional Budget Office, testified that the annual cost of caring for veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would nearly triple or more in the next decade, rising to $5.5 billion to $8.4 billion in 2020, from $1.9 billion in 2010.

In that hearing, Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, also raised concerns that veterans� disability checks might not be paid if Congress fails to raise the debt limit next week.

With an annual budget of more than $125 billion, the Department of Veterans Affairs runs a nationwide health care system that cares for more than eight million people who have left military service, of which about 700,000 are from the current wars. The agency also administers disability compensation for millions of veterans wounded in service.

Estimating the long-term costs of those programs is a complex, contentious art, and no one inside the government does it beyond 10 years. But independent and government experts agree that for a variety of reasons the costs are just about certain to continue rising, even though large numbers of World War II and Korean War veterans are dying.

The reasons have much to do with improvements in battlefield medicine and equipment. More troops today are surviving injuries � 90 percent, up from 86 percent in Vietnam, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But that also means that more troops are coming home with complex and severe wounds.
Moreover, nearly one in five service members returning from deployment are thought to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. A similar number are thought to have sustained traumatic brain injury. Though not all seek help, a significant percentage are expected to receive care from the veterans system, in part because of efforts to reduce the stigma of mental health problems in the military.

Further adding to strains on the department, more young veterans have been seeking care from the system than had been anticipated, possibly because they do not have private health insurance. Outreach efforts by the veterans department and veterans groups may have also increased enrollment, experts say.
Linda Bilmes, a Harvard academic who has done extensive research on the impact of the wars, said all those factors together suggested that �the actual cost over 30, 40 or 50 years will be even higher than we projected.�

�And with life expectancy getting longer,� she said, �the cost will probably peak later than in past wars.�

Ms. Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public finance at the Kennedy School of Government, has estimated that the total cost of health care and disability compensation to veterans of the current wars will be nearly $1 trillion over the next 40 years.
Some academics and government officials say her projections are too high. But there is broad agreement on her larger point, that the costs will keep going up for decades to come.

�Because we have saved more peoples� lives,� said Gordon Adams, a senior budget official in the Clinton administration, �we�re going to be paying that bill for some time to come.�

Mr. Adams, a professor of international relations at American University, said he considered it highly unlikely that Congress would ever cut veterans benefits. But Ms. Bilmes disagrees.

�I think when times are tough, there are no sacred cows,� she said. �There was a time when it would be unthinkable that we would be talking about cutting pensions for teachers, firemen and policemen. Yet all over the country that�s what we�re looking at today.�