This chart shows that neither party really cares about raising our debt...
 

Since 1980, the debt ceiling has been raised 39 times. It was raised 17 times under Ronald Reagan, four times under Bill Clinton and seven times under George W. Bush. Congress is currently in a contentious debate with the White House on whether to raise the ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline, which would make the fourth raise under Obama.

Source

It's always been a mix of both parties getting drunk on debt, no matter who is in charge of the White House, Senate or House of Representatives.

Everybody is out to fuck US citizens. The quarreling Republicans vs Democrats show is just a distraction.

Damn, I was hoping it would be a pie chart.


I like pie.

CurrentlySober likes poo.

You guys may have more in common than you realize.

I bet a poo pie is delish.

True, in recent years both parties have had deficits.
BUT it took 200 years to accumulate $10 trillion in debt and just 2 1/2 years to add another 4.5 trillion with Obama and these dems.
No other president or Congress has come near to over spending by four and half trillion dollars in just a couple years.

In other words, Obama and his democrat congress overspent 25 times as much as the average. To put it in more familiar terms, that's the same as if a 50 year old man with $100,000 in total debt
suddenly put another $40,000 on credit cards in just six months.

It comes out to something like $30,000 more per tax payer that we now owe.
$30,000 of new debt for each of us is unprecedented and that's what has many people greatly concerned. That and of course what we've ben doing that last 20 years is simply stupid.
Just because Clinton and Bush helped put us into debt doesn't mean anyone thinks we SHOULD be in debt up to our eyeballs.

The republicans have just been forced by their base to start getting serious about it. At the same time, the democrats have put their political futures more and more in the hands of people who expect the tax payers to carry them, so the dems can't get serious about a responsible budget without losing their base.

Clinton left office with a balanced budget, get your fucking facts straight.

Oh and he did it by raising taxes. And a little wikipedia shows that the unemployment rate at the end of the Clinton presidency was 4%. And Clinton's tax hike was on top of Bush Sr.'s tax hike.

A. Tax cuts don't make jobs.
B. Higher taxes pay the bills.

You will never get the republicans here to admit their part in accumulating the debt.

They've been told what they think, and thats what they think.

As soon as they are back in power, it will all be "This is necessary, we have to fight our wars." - or whatever their excuse will be.

Then when they lose power it wil be WAAAH WAAAAH and blaming whatever dem is there for the debt.

That our media allows this kind of blatant lying tells you everything you need to know about who's really pulling the strings.

That's a widely held misconception amongst people who get their news from a certain comedian.
A real source such as the treasury department will show you what really happened.
In fact Clinton's last budget borrowed $200 billion from social security to spend elsewhere.
In none of Clinton's budgets was there a balance. That particular comedian claims
a balance by ignoring the $200 billion borrowed from the social security trust fund and spent on other things.
In fact, the national debt increased every year under Clinton.

By his logic, if I earn $100,000 and spent $125,000, I'm balanced as long as I borrow the $25,000 on a credit card.

For real numbers, rather than Comedy Central numbers, see the treasury:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPD...application=np

Note that the federal fiscal year starts in October, so Clinton's last budget (FY2001) ended 9/2001.

The solutions are simple.

Look at Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the UK for how to fix the problem.

Basically it will mean more taxes, less spending. both of which will hurt your standard of living.

The money being borrowed to prop up the US economy to a level it doesn't earn, goes into the pockets of Americans. Look around and see the loans and how they're spent. Roads, police, fireman, army, Government funded projects, offices full of public sector workers.

And low taxes. Yes your low taxes are not funding what your Government spends, which in a roundabout way ends up in your pockets.

You want to know who to blame?

Look at the "Made in ???????" labels of what fills your house and then look in the mirror. Then look on the back and where it was made.

And it's not just the US, it's a problem for most Western countries.

You are falling for their bait. Rather than saying its been bad for 30 years, you are looking at one snippet to try to make a point. The reality is they have all been fucking us for a long time. One trillion, ten trillion, who cares. Everybody is guilty.

I guess you missed the part where I said "what we've ben doing for the last 20 years is simply stupid". However, the fact that Bush was stupid to the tune of $400 billion per year does not mean it's ok for Obama to be $1200 billion / year stupid. Absolutely, Bush was stupid and over spent. Obama is over spending three times as much. Who would have thought someone could be three times as stupid as Bush?

Clinton actually left office with $31.5 billion in tax CUTS in his final budget.

and the story continues, one party chooses to blame another party
while effectively and collaboratively fucking up the country.
when will people learn both parties are not on our side.

The current debt talk is just a way for the super wealthy to keep their tax cuts when it's so obvious they need to start paying their fare share.

That's why they created the phony Tea Party, so they can pretend that they have a constituency to answer to that "demands" debt reduction. The only thing is, the constituency doesn't even exist. They just invented a phony voter base to answer to. Pretty ingenious actually and if you don't think this is how the world really works, then you're naive.

When huge corporations are paying ZERO in taxes and people say we have a spending problem, it's just so ridiculous.

But wait, if we raise taxes, the big companies will stop hiring people, right? That's like the abusive husband that tells his wife, "don't make me hit you", then when he hits her anyway he says, "see what you made me do".

Do you really think if we lower taxes that Nike will ever start making shoes here? Will Apple ever make iPhones here? Big companies are never going to build factories here and start hiring people, so we might as well get some of that money they've made by building factories all over the world and exploiting slave labor.

The American voters are in an abusive relationship with the super rich.

I thought that was obvious.

The debt ceiling is a stupid distraction anyway. The Congress passes the budget... they are the ones who decide how much debt to take on... a ceiling that is raised at will and sometimes used as a political football is just stupid. If they didn't want the debt to be so high, the would cut the budget or raise taxes.

Way to be objective Bill, knowing full well the Democrats are guilty of the exact same thing. You've apparently been told what to think and that's what you think.

Mynameisjim hit the nail on the head, can't find a single off statement