National Budgets and Budget Deficits

I few years back Canada was running a deficit and going further into debt. It became a big issue here for all parties and we now have been running surplus budgets and paying down the debt for years. As a result our dollar has gone from the mid 60's up to around par (it peaked at 1.10) with the US dollar.I hardly ever seem to hear anything by any of the candidates about the huge deficit that is being run by the US govt., let alone the mountain of debt including foreign debt that is accumulating.(Except Ron Paul and he isn't going anywhere.) There is the usual talk about cutting spending but nobody is suggesting that they will bring in a balanced budget, unless I'm missing something which is always possible.Doesn't anybody think this is a problem?{Note: This new topic message 1 is from message 103 of the "Your prediction about outcome of Super Tuesday" topic. - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Change "Devicits" to "Deficits" in topic title.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : See note above.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Hello again Taz.I would agree that there are a group of Christians in the US that will always vote with a Christian that they believes shares their beliefs. There are also those who wouldn't ever vote for someone like Bush because of his beliefs.Frankly, when I vote I want the best person for the job. I wouldn't support Huckabee as I don't see getting rid of the IRS as the solution to getting rid of the deficit.Looking backwards by pointing the finger at Bush isn't a solution. Sure he took the problem of deficit spending and made the problem far worse. In this election you are looking at the future and blaming Bush isn't a solution. How is that going to help the fututre of your kids.Where is the will by any of the candidates to put out a platform that outlines how they would reach a balanced budget? It is just the elephant in the room that nobody seems to talk about. Ron Paul does but the other candidates treat him with derision.All of the candidates talk about how they are going to spend money on things like health care, Iraq etc. They only speak in very general terms about reducing expenses. None of the major candidates have the guts to say that there is a major problem that we have to address and here's how I would do it.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Some day these chickens are going to home to roost.MSN | Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest VideosU.S. deficit running at twice last year's
Federal spending also rising at faster pace than last year

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Well as a Canadian let me say I disagree with the first part of your statement and as for the second part I can't see where supply side economics has anything to do with it. It doesn't matter what economic philosophy you believe in. Spending more than you earn is just not a good thing whether it be in your household or your country.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

It seems to me that my approach is about as simplistic as it gets. Deficits just mean accumulating and accelerating debt. High levels of debt that you don't have the income or the reserves to cover just ain't good.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

But spending is spending whether it is subsidies to businesses or individuals, a war in Iraq, or a universal medicare plan. I don't see it as just a Republican issue. I can't see either party addressing the issue.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I'll buy all of that. I agree that supply side econmics is a good theory but not to the point that you run into deficit.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Actually he didn't ask a question. It was just a comment.As for the rest of your post I agree except to point out that in this case the result so far has been a depreciation of the US dollar without causing runaway inflation. However it seems to me that as the cost of all your imports go up inflation is going to be a problem sooner or later.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I'm not at all sure that I agree with the statement about restricting freedom and legislating morality, but I agree that they have been very liberal when it comes to increasing the size and cost of government.The point though is I as I stated in the OP there isn't one major candidate that is prepared to make a balanced budget a priority. We want to learn from the past but it is the future that matters now.McCain and Huckabee want to increase military expenditures in Iraq and Clinton and Obama talk about increasing spending domesticaly in areas like health care. There are only proposals about how to spend money that in one sense doesn't even exist. They just want to print more of it. Ron Paul talked about it but he was ignored.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Look at this list from a CIA site of the current account balances of countries around the world satrting with China as number 1 and ending with the US at number 163.https://www.cia.gov:443/...-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.htmlSomething is going to have to give at some point.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I realize that Glenn Beck is a right wing commentator but I think that this comment of his is not a left vs right issue at all. It is a common sense issue and once again I don't hear any of the 3 remaining candidates dealing with this issue.

quote:

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Glenn Beck: The $53 trillion asteroid
Story Highlights
Medicare trust fund will become insolvent in the year 2019, report says

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Paulson: "Rising costs will ... threaten America's future prosperity"

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Expert: Unfunded debt is "an IOU of around $455,000 per American household"

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Beck: Our financial deficit is only dwarfed by "deficit of trust" we have in our leaders

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By Glenn Beck
CNN

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Editor's note: "Glenn Beck" is on Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 p.m. ET.

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Let's say a giant asteroid was headed toward Earth right now and experts say it has a good chance of ending civilization as we know it. Let's also say that we've known about this asteroid for years but even as it gets closer and closer our leaders do nothing.

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"Don't worry," they tell us, "The next administration will figure something out."

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With the future of our country at stake, would Americans really sit back and tolerate that kind of inaction? Of course not -- we'd be sharpening our pitchforks and demanding answers.

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Well there may not be a space asteroid heading toward us, but there is an economic one -- and the threat to our future is just as severe.

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You might think that I'm talking about the recession (sorry: potential recession) or credit crisis, but I'm thinking bigger. Much, much bigger.

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Let me give you three numbers that will put this economic asteroid into perspective: $200 billion, $14.1 trillion, and $53 trillion.

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$200 billion is the approximate total amount of write-downs announced so far as a result of the current credit crisis.

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$14.1 trillion is the size of the entire U.S. economy

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And $53 trillion is (drum roll please) the approximate size of this country's bill for the Social Security and Medicare promises we've made.
While no one will ever mistake me for Alan Greenspan, it seems to me that the third number is quite a bit larger than the other two. It also seems very few people care.

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According to the latest Social Security and Medicare Trustees report (and I use that term loosely since it has the word "trust" in it) released earlier this week, the economic asteroid will first make impact in the year 2019 when the Medicaid trust fund becomes insolvent.

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Only an immediate 122 percent increase in Medicare taxes and a 26 percent increase in Social Security taxes can prevent (or more likely, delay) its impact.

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Realizing that Americans have become pretty much numb to these kinds of ridiculous sounding proposals, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tried to up the ante this week. "Without change," he said, "Rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues, and threaten America's future prosperity."

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Now, I know we're all worried about important sounding things that none of us understand, like CDO's, SIV's, and Credit Default Swaps, but did you hear what our Treasury Secretary just said?

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"Rising costs will ... consume nearly all projected federal revenues ..."

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Translation: Every single tax dollar that is sent to Washington will be used to pay for just these two programs.

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That means no money is left for anything else. Nothing. No Department of Defense or Homeland Security, no Department of Energy, no Department of Justice, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Internal Revenue Service. Actually, knowing our government, they'd probably keep the IRS going somehow.

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Of course, none of this is exactly breaking news. Our leaders have known about this rapidly approaching asteroid for years now and they've done nothing but debate it. At the same time, I'm a realist. I understand that this stuff is "the third rail of politics," but our leaders' negligence on this issue is damn near criminal. No, correction, it is criminal.

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Americans aren't afraid of the truth. In fact, we crave the truth only slightly more than we crave a leader who will actually give it to us. But part of the problem with this issue is that numbers followed by 12 zeroes aren't very relatable to the average American. Instead, try this on for size.

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A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. And 53 trillion seconds? 1.7 million years.

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In an article that will appear in an upcoming issue of my magazine, Fusion, former Comptroller General of the United States David Walker tries a different tactic. He writes that our unfunded promises translate into "an IOU of around $455,000 per American household."

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Wow. Does the size of our debt hit home now?

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The America that I know doesn't sit around waiting for someone to rescue it from disaster. Besides, who do we expect to swoop in and save the day? Congress? The president? Please -- they're not only the ones who put the asteroid into space, they've also been making it bigger with irresponsible spending on everything from prescription drugs to billions in rebate checks and bailouts.

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Bruce Willis and Tommy Lee Jones? They're more likely to be on Social Security than to save it.

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And that leaves only us: We the People. Like every other crisis we face, it's up to us to save ourselves.

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But how?

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Be honest, no matter what side of the political aisle you're on, it's obvious that our financial deficit is dwarfed only by the deficit of trust we have in our leaders.

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I'm willing to do the right thing for our future, I'm willing to sacrifice, but not when I believe that our leaders will do nothing but make the asteroid even larger.

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Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.