National debt hits historic $20 trillion mark

[sandensea]

Source: CBS News

The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.

While at Camp David, Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department.

The $318 billion increase raised the U.S. national debt to $20.16 trillion by Friday. Since Trump's inauguration, the debt has increased about $215 billion from around $19.94 trillion.

The Treasury Department will be able to continue borrowing until Dec. 8, which is when the bill is due to expire. At that time, Congress will have to face a new call for legislation tackling once again federal spending and the debt ceiling.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/

[leftofcool]

1. And crickets from the GOP

[sandensea]

2. Just as well.

They'd only blame it on Obama - with a big side of racial dog-whistling.

[leftofcool]

3. No doubt

[underpants]

26. Not today - they're busy attacking Stevie Wonder and Beyonc

BTW talk radio is on a hate loop today. I heard almost verbatim the same thing from the local morning idiot to you know who just now.

Attack Stevie Wonder
Attack Beyoncé
Go back to attack Kanye West for 2005.

Gee they all have something in common.

[roamer65]

34. "Prejudices are what rule the vulgar crowd."

-Voltaire

[christx30]

4. The best thing we can do right now is to

have 2 or 3 unfunded wars, and lower taxes for the wealthiest 1%. I'm sure that will solve everything.

[Midnight Writer]

5. No worries. Debt doesn't matter when GOP is in charge. 'sides, Donald is King of Debt.

[truthisfreedom]

13. King of bankruptcy.

They're different.

[SharonAnn]

6. American on track to pay off national debt by 2009

Headline of a newspaper clipping that I saved and ran across today. Bill Clinton spoke on this in December of 2000.

We all know how that went after W was elected.

[sandensea]

8. And Gore's Social Security lockbox would have kept the fund flush with cash.

Instead of holding nothing but IOUs - another Dubya legacy.

[Midnight Writer]

18. The most broken hearted I have ever been was when my old friend said Gore wanted to "lock" folk's SS

benefits away from them in his "lockbox".

Yes, even though he is a well educated man, his parents live on their SS, and HE WANTS TO PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY, he voted for Bush because Gore was going to "lock up Social Security".

[HughBeaumont]

24. Just think how bad it WOULD have been . . .

. . . had Dubya received Congressional approval for privatizing SS like he wanted to before he was re-Selected.

[BigmanPigman]

7. The debt could easily be erased and even end up in the black

if they were to sell tickets to the fake prez's public flogging (or tarring and feathering, "going medieval", etc) after he and his GOP bros are found guilty of selling our country to Putin.

[sandensea]

9. That, plus properly taxing the offshore banking crowd, should do it.

We could hold Thurderdome-style events, with the inaugural death match between Cheeto and Paul Singer. That should take care of half the offshoring right there.

[Yupster]

35. If Trump were publicly flogged

And each Hillary voter bought a ticket to see it, the debt could almost be paid off if each ticket cost $ 300,000.

[Grassy Knoll]

10. The Trump Grumps Are Already Calling Him A Librul Leaning Independent...

....

[no_hypocrisy]

11. How much interest is that per day?

[sandensea]

12. Debt interest payments for FY2017 were budgeted at $266 billion.

That's $729 million a day.

By buying most of the issues themselves, the Fed helps keep U.S. bond rates at near-historic low levels. If, for instance, rates were near their 1981 highs (about 14%), the payments would be around five times as much.

[Yupster]

36. That is the fear

Once interest rates go up, what happens to the budget?

[sandensea]

37. If, God forbid, the Fed can no longer keep up, rates may in fact go up.

The fact is that private-sector demand - domestic and overseas - just can't keep up with our financing needs as it is. If Cheeto gets his budget-blowing top-bracket tax cuts through Congress, the Fed will have to really ramp up their bond purchases.

Thanks to everyone's implicit faith in the dollar, the Fed does seem capable of absorbing even trillion-dollar deficits (and thus keep rates low). But if they can't keep up with the deficits, or by some policy change refuse to, then it's back to the early '80s.

Question is: what's too much for our deal old Fed?

[Yupster]

38. Rates do need to go up though

When things go bad, the fed will want to cut rates to spur the economy.

In order to do that in the bad times, you better raise them back up in the good times.

Rates this low hurt the elderly the most. Many older people live mostly on their cd interest, and today that's worhtless.

[sandensea]

39. Good point.

Rate policy at the Fed has been, since 1985 or so, apparently designed to accommodate borrowers much more than savers - including, of course, our deficit-guzzling federal government.

A lot of that is said to have begun during the crucial but largely forgotten Plaza Accords of 1985 (so named for the Plaza Hotel, where the talks were held). In them, the rest of the G-7 basically forced Reagan to give up his strong dollar policy - and the fastest way to do that was to bring rates sharply down. They've been falling ever since.

All in all, they did the U.S. economy - and Reagan - a big favor. Lower rates restarted the '80s recovery (which stalled in '85/'86) in the short term, and has saved the federal government trillions in interest payments in the long term.

30-year bond rates from 1977 to 2012 (they haven't changed much since then). Note the very sharp drop following the 1985 Plaza Accords.

[turbinetree]

14. And how much of this was on the credit card for lets say 2003-2017

for Afghanistan and Iraq---------------3 trillion and still counting....................

[sandensea]

15. Bush follies account for nearly half our current national debt.

[turbinetree]

16. Why do I feel that the horror never goes away---------------and those / that criminal gang

should be paying this off, instead of you and me and millions of others--------------------------they lied.

And we have a right wing ideologue Congress that wants to take away, your's and mine and millions of others of our social safety nets to pay for this BS and blame us .......................

Thanx for the graph it just reinforces the horror

[sandensea]

17. Sure thing.

I'm just glad the Bushies failed in their all-out assault on the world's faith in the dollar. Among many other things, it's what allows the Fed to buy up most new bond issues and in so doing keep interest rates at Kennedy-era lows.

[Dopers_Greed]

19. The fiscal conservatives have been silent...

...since the Million Dollar Cheeto was installed.

[safeinOhio]

20. That's because a

$20 trillion debt has brought on a $22 billion Dow.

[Achilleaze]

21. let the record show: republicans fully in charge

I wonder if the russians made them do this to America?



As the party of Responsibility Shirkers led by an illegitimate casino hustler (the notorious Draft-&-Responsibility-Dodger-in-Chief) republicans are no doubt already working overtime to try and blame others.

Sad. Sucky sad. Some day republicans will learn that honesty is the best policy, or so Americans hope.

[Ohiya]

22. That's $20,000,000,000,000.00

Let's see...

Divide by roughly 300,000,000 us citizens

= $66,666.66 each

Sorry I don't have that much cash on hand.


PS feel free to check my math, I've been up all night

[Javaman]

23. back in prehistoric times when the deficit first reached 1 trillion dollars...

Newsday on Long Island ran a stat as to "how much is a trillion dollars?

back then 1 trillion dollars could cover every square inch of Long Island in dollar bills...3 deep.

now multiply that by 20.

[sandensea]

25. Ah, yes. 1981.

When Reagan promised to eliminate the nation's "disgraceful" $70 billion budget deficit - only to triple it in just two years.

We're just lucky Cheeto is far too inept to get his top-bracket tax cuts and defense spending splurge passed, or we'd be looking at $1 trillion+ deficits (again).

"Look at all that red. Nancy's favorite color!"

[Javaman]

27. he was such an evil prick. nt

[sandensea]

28. If only the John Birchers hadn't gotten to him in the late 1940s.

He was a natural politician, and would have been a great ally for the New Deal coalition - which he had supported until then (in no small part because his own family had been saved from abject poverty by FDR's programs).

[Javaman]

29. wasn't it "mommy" that converted him to republicanism?

she was also evil in a very insidious sort of way.

[sandensea]

30. Good point.

Both she and Ronnie were known for ratting out leftists in Hollywood during the McCarthy terror. Her adoptive father, Dr. Loyal Davis, was a rabid Bircher and said to be a real Bob Beckel-style bigot.

[Javaman]

33. that's right, I forgot, he ratted people out during the red scare.

he had long term aspirations back then.

bastard.

the funny thing is, both ronnie and mommy have quite the checkered past.

I read this book, years ago, about The Garden of Allah. I notorious hang out for hollywood types during the 20s-50's. And it painted a rather less than flattering portrait of both of them.

[Achilleaze]

31. Thanks republicans

You're in charge. This is your stinking mess. We will remember.

[roamer65]

32. "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value: zero."

-Voltaire