Anybody see the article on the national debt?

$14T and growing at a rate of $4 billion a day! Isn't that just ducky! The government borrows 41 cents for every dollar it spends and we, the people,  every man, woman, and child, equals $45,300. I'm so glad my 3-yo grandson will have a good life.

Has the TARP money been applied to this debt? I didn't see anything in any article on that. What to do? Raising the debt ceiling will keep us "solvent" for a little while, but what happens when that limit is reached? Will they raise it again? Will this give the government the green light to spend more? These questions were not answered in that article. 

Geithner said failure to increase borrowing would be "a catastrophe" perhaps rivaling the financial meltdown of 2008-09.

And...before anyone starts blaming Bush and reckless spending on his part, how about this? "The U.S. debt ceiling has been raised 11 times since 1996, amidst a worldwide bubble in government as politicians the world over try to fix their economies by drinking themselves sober. And as Congress has raised the government debt ceiling those 11 times, almost in lockstep, the Government Accountability Office could not sign off on the government’s books for 14 consecutive years, because its regular audits found the nation’s books in terrible disarray."

Reagan also signed off on an increase in the government’s debt ceiling in 1985 and in 1987 but spending cuts were not agreed upon and the deficit continued to rise. Reagan approved the increase in 1987 only after he vowed to lend support to a new anti-spending, budget-balancing bill by Senators Phil Gramm (R-Texas), Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.). 

The 1985 budget balancing law, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, went far beyond agreeing to spending cuts here or there. It forced Congress to adhere to balancing and restructuring the budget, with spending caps and automatic spending cuts. It failed. Both Reagan and Clinton raided the SS fund to keep from going into default, but only Clinton threatened to stop the SS checks, so Congress was forced to raise the debt ceiling.  Yet he vetoed the budget and  forced the government into shutdown in 1995. Will this happen again?   It seems the raiding SS is the reason Clinton left office with a balanced budget.

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. it is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. Its is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance the government's reckless fiscal policies. Piling more debt onto the federal government’s existing mountain of IOUs means “shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,”- Obama 2006....and not a single Democrat voted to raise the limit that year. So Obama, back then, was against raising the limit and now he's for it.  

Reading the financial mags, most agree the government won't go into default but it will make it tough, if not impossible to borrow money to cover the debt. It will be up to the U.S. to figure its way out of this mess. The plan that caused so much hoopla a month or so ago was the only way to go, yet was voted down, which seems like a mirror image of the failure of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget bill. 

The saying history repeats itself seems to be so true, but it usually doesn't happen within such a short time period.

This is my vent for the day. Thanks for reading.