Congratulations, America, on your $10T debt load!

[bitwhys]

If I knew better, I'd have been checking for the current balance on the OASI fund. I didn't realize it came out in September so my reckonning has been based on the previous years numbers.



The US Treasury has been writing "special securities" IOUs to the Old Age and Disability Insurance fund for years. Its been all the rage, especially since the 4% payroll tax introduced during the Reagan years. All that extra cash that was supposed to be saved up and invested for everyone's retirement has be magically transformed into off-the-book debt and weighed against the deficit of the day so it didn't sound as bad. That stack-o-paper is currently (as of Sept, 2005) reported as $1,809,422,000,000 (pdf). Between that and paying out benefits there's basically squat in the fund itself, which is actually an improvement last year when there was technically less than squat.



so if you take the $1.8T the treasury owes you the people and add it to today's debt to the penny you find that congress needs to come up with $10,172,958,754,922. sooner or later. you'd think. btw, the actually extra digit tossed up at exactly the end of January. would have made a hell of a party. sorry I missed it.

[The Nutty Professor]

Congratulations: n. An expression of approval.



I guess it WOULD take a socialist to approve of a debt load. Good luck with that, and with those 'medically approved wait-time benchmarks' as well lol . . . and I reckon there's only one 'n' in 'reckoning'

[Canuck]

www.ndir.com/SI/education/debt.shtml



www.ndir.com/SI/education/slave.shtml



"Ohhh, Ca-Na-Da...."

[bitwhys]

anybody who considers every dime paid for public works to be "slavery" is a fruitcake.



for the record...



www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/govt03a.htm



Federal government net financial debt

$ millions

Gross federal debt

2001 644,900

2002 640,526

2003 629,638

2004 628,830

2005 626,217



see a pattern?

[Canuck]

I see a pattern. And a Fact.



"The United States exported $160.9 billion in goods to Canada last year. But imports from Canada totaled $211.8 billion.



The bottom line: a Canadian trade surplus (or American trade deficit) of $50.9 billion in 2005.



It marked the sixth straight year the trade deficit with Canada was more than $50 billion, thanks to NAFTA."



The United States continues to Spoonfeed poor unfortunate Canada - just like it always has.



Help it pay down that pesky National Debt, which rose up to about 600 million until about 6 years ago.



See that "pattern"?



Pull that 211.8 billion and send it to China and Japan.



The Maple Leaf would wither and die faster than you could say "well, hey, ok, eh!"



BTW; more fruitcakes in transit from California.

[bitwhys]

Quote:

---

Pull that 211.8 billion and send it to China and Japan.

---

and how exactly is Washington going to pull that one off?

[Galmin]

I sorely miss the fiscal responsible republicans. When did they disapear? Where did they go?



It seems the most recent administation with fiscal grip was the Clinton administration.



Isn't that ironic?

[bitwhys]

but you've got to admit the brand loyalty is astonishing.