Attn teabaggers: here’s what happens if the debt ceiling is not raised

Salon | What happens if the debt ceiling bomb explodes?:

In some quarters of the American political system, there are people — predominantly of the Tea Party Republican persuasion — who believe that Congress doesn’t need to raise the debt ceiling. If the U.S. government isn’t allowed to borrow any more money to pay its bills, runs their line of thinking, that’s fine and dandy. Finally, we’d be forced to tighten our belts and “live within our means!” Ignore the fearmongers predicting disaster — they’re just trying to scare markets and voters.

[...] Let’s start with the basic numbers. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the U.S. Treasury will have about $172.4 billion in revenue in August that can be applied to $306.7 billion in outstanding bills. If the U.S. Treasury is forbidden from borrowing any additional funds, it will therefore have to cut total August spending by about $134 billion, or 44 percent. …Click on over to this cool interactive widget at Bloomberg Government and decide for yourself who gets paid and who doesn’t if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling.

Spreadsheet breakdown:

cont:

[...] Now, there are plenty of Tea Partyers who would no doubt be happy to get rid of the EPA, food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid and any number of other government spending programs…

Since this is usually “all about me” when we’re talking teapartyers, and so many teapartyers are receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits, why shouldn’t the rest of us — the working people, the unemployed, the college students — all agree that Social Security / Medicare should be cut if the limit isn’t raised? Those two programs total $77.8 billion out of August’s budget — which is over 25% of all the money due. The majority of us don’t receive those benefits and we’re learning quickly that only two things should matter: ME and MINE as opposed to YOU and YOURS. In other words, boot straps.

…There are lots of different ways to divvy up government spending according to your personal priorities… if the U.S. government cut its spending [by 44%] for both August and September, GDP growth [c]ould drop by 2.3 percent from the previous quarter.

[...] Choose your poison: global market chaos, savage cuts to the social welfare safety net or recession. Or, heck, all of the above. …Slower economic growth means less tax revenue, which would force even more budget cuts. Laying off hundreds of thousands of federal employees would further boost the unemployment rate. And if the U.S. government ever did end up authorized to borrow money again, the yield it would likely have to offer to attract buyers for its damaged goods would undoubtedly skyrocket — putting further pressure on government finances.

Of course despite this alarming situation, those tax cuts for the wealthy are #1 on the list of important things for teapartyers and their corporate sponsors and their Republican leaders — Boehner, Cantor, Kyl and McConnell. This budgeting lesson should clearly illustrate how we’re all paying to provide the wealthy with their tax cuts. There’s no way the federal government obviously needs more revenue, right? We’ll just cut YOUR programs and services instead of mine.

UPDATE:

Boehner agrees with Obama: Social Security may not be paid if debt ceiling isn’t raised

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9 thoughts on “Attn teabaggers: here’s what happens if the debt ceiling is not raised”

Aske not what I can do for my country, ask what can I get from somebody else! Let’s not worry about spending, let’s raise taxes and raise the amount of debt beyond our current ability to pay too! The usual campfire tale of terror is grandma in the gutter eating cat food, and billionaires fretting over what exotic place to visit on globe trotting. Is it possible that maybe we don’t need 30 duplicate bureaus to process forms each burea created for the same purpose as in department of education. Our local school superintendent was hired primarily because he knew how to submit all the complicated and multiple applications for grants, etc. Is it possble, we can fire (yes they will be unemployed) a few of these paper shuffling people who create forms so complicated, the processors need more assistants to understand what they are asking for? We are building a maze, labyrinth, and no value in this byzantine process to spend $0.90 on the process, in order to get $0.10 to the school! Rather than actually do executive work by the President to actually govern and administer as an executive, he just simply adds money to a system that spends (wastes) more per student than any country in the world, and gets lower standards of performance than any country in the world. Spending more in education in our current manner achieves less, and wastes more. In Russia they kept lowering standards in their workers paradise to make it appear they were improving. In USA, teachers cheat on standards tests to appear they are doing better, and students are doing worse.

UTMB on July 17, 2011 at 08:15 said:

You must be talking about the No Child Left Behind Act, proposed by the Bush Administration and signed into law by George W Bush in 2001 with overwhelming bipartisan support.

“Is it possible that maybe we don’t need 30 duplicate bureaus to process forms each burea created for the same purpose…”

What duplicate bureaus? 30, really?
- hoboduke on July 17, 2011 at 09:04 said:
  
  I am guilty of exagerating! There are only 29 overlapping duplicating bureaus, not 30. The whole premise of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is to defuse theteacher union strangle hold on education. By setting a benchmark to measure education, there could be confusion on my school is different because my kids are dumber. If a child can achieve in any school then a teacher can achieve in any school. Measuring is a basic method to remove arbitrary emotional evaluations by local school boards. There can be no favoritism. Of course, setting standards is not fair! Teachers don’t want to be measured by their effectiveness to educate.
eurobrat on July 17, 2011 at 22:30 said:

Just what we need, an even higher unemployment rate. But hey, I’m sure all those wealthy job creators will be on hand to help when the country crashes and burns.