The Budget debate reveals that your government is lying to you. Again.

The showdown of the first quarter of 2011 has been framed, ladies and gentlemen, tickets are available at the box office. Save your money though, you might not have much more coming: Republicans threaten to NOT raise the debt ceiling when we will hit it in March. Now, for those not savvy on the driest of dry political subjects, here's a quick lesson on what the hell the debt "ceiling" is:

The easiest metaphor for the debt ceiling is a credit card limit. Like your MasterCard, the United States has a cap on how much money it can have borrowed. Also like you, if it hits that limit, it cannot go over---it can't borrow anymore. The main difference between you and the US government is this: you can't tell MasterCard "but I need more money, so there." The government can. As long as a majority of Congress votes in favor of raising the debt ceiling, America can continue to borrow. If it does not, borrowing stops.


Now, at first glance, this seems unfair. "Why can the government just raise that? Doesn't that mean there's really no debt ceiling as long as the government wants to borrow?" Yes, that's true, and that's the logic behind refusing to raise the ceiling: if we couldn't borrow anymore, we would have to balance the money and only spend the money we have. Wouldn't that be great?



Let me explain why it would not be great. Simple math problem:

If Susie has $2,000 and the overpriced computer she wants is $3,000, how much does she still need before she can buy it?

If you don't have the answer, I have to ask: how'd you get this far?

Anyway, obviously, Susie (our metaphorical America) is short $1000 to buy her computer, but she needs it now (everyone else uses Skype and her webcam sucks). So she charges it to her credit card of course! Otherwise, she'd end up either having to work to the bone to make the extra money fast, or spend on nothing else, like food or water. Like anyone needs those.

Look at him, with all that luxury. GET A JOB!

Imagine if Susie had a $500 limit on her card though. And instead of declining, if she goes over that limit, the bank comes and asks her for all the money back that she owes. Now. Oh, and until then she can't have another penny, from any of her accounts. That's America's situation:

We take in $2.2 trillion in taxes (as of 2010). We SPEND $3.5 trillion.
3.7 - 2.2 = $1.5 trillion in deficit.

Basically, anything in the deficit MUST BE BORROWED. There is no other way to spend that money. The alternative is printing money, which can cause hyperinflation (meaning next year your money is worth half of what it is this year. Yeah, hence we don't do that printing-money much).

If we do not raise the debt ceiling, we cannot continue to borrow, which means we would not be able to afford $1.5 trillion in our budget. And we would also almost certainly have a downgraded credit rating, which would increase the interest we pay on current debt and destabilize our currency and economy.

"So?" You might ask. "We spend too much! Cut the budget!"

"Chill the fuck out guys, I got this."

Ok, let's do that then. Should be easy. Hm...how about a 50% cut in the military? No more supercarriers, no more Special Forces to take out terrorists before they can attack...that'll reduce the deficit by...oh. 15%. Ok, 85% left to go!

What about all those awful Congressional earmarks everyone seems to complain about? They waste SO MUCH MONEY! Ok, get rid of all of the wasteful earmarks. That brings us down a whopping...1% of the deficit. Only 84% left!

Ok, well let's say we're willing to REALLY sacrifice here:
No more NASA,
no more FBI (which includes a loss of a majority of missing persons investigations)
no more assistance to police departments,
no more environmental protection,
no more assistance to poor people to find housing,
no more aid to poor nations,
no more researching cancer or AIDS or diabetes or genetics,
no more building/repairing highways, bridges, ports, airports, trains,
no more federal school funding or increased funds to poor districts,
no more grants to university students,
no more National Weather Service,
no more Coast Guard,
no more building flood levees and power stations,
no more aid to hospitals to cover ERs,
no more aid to small business.

Eliminate ALL major government services except entitlement programs, the other half of the military we let survive, and paying off interest on the debt...and our deficit does get cut.

By another 35%.

Leaving us 49% more of the deficit to cut.

Yep. That's the first of the two big lies being propagated by the people currently in government, mainly Republicans: all we need to do is cut wasteful spending, and there goes the deficit.

Well, if you consider every single thing government does as waste (which some of my Libertarian friends might), then that's fine. But if you believe government spending has the ability to do some good (read the list above), then you must know that the math doesn't add up: spending cuts alone cannot save the current fiscal scenario.

The second lie is also equally false, and this one is the Democrats': Republican-driven tax cuts for the wealthy in the 2000s killed the budget, we just have to let those expire and the deficit will come down!

This one is simply untrue. In order for taxes to make up the deficits, tax revenue would have to rise----by about half their current value. This means that taxes on the wealthy can't go up just from 30% to 35%, but rather to 45 % or 50. And the average American's taxes would not remain at 25, but would probably have to rise to 36%. Taxes were already disturbingly low at the end of the 1990s, the Bush Tax Cuts certainly did not help, but the situation would be similarly dire either way.

Third lie: Social Security and Medicare are too important to cut. They can pay for themselves.
Also, simply not true. For one thing, 2010 marked the first year that payments from Social Security out-paced the money meant to pay for the program from the FICA tax, a separate tax on income designed for it. This means that from every year from 2011 on, we can expect the Social Security Administration to need more tax assistance, and soak up more of the budget.

Even if you believe the SSA is the most important program on the budget, its outlays already exceed all money spent on discretionary spending. Combined with Medicare and Medicaid, they make up 40% of the federal budget, or 99% of the deficit.

I'll say that one more time: our mandatory spending programs, that lawmakers claim should be invulnerable to cuts, make up 99% of the deficit. Cutting all other discretionary spending combined does not add up to the same amount.

The point?

WE HAVE TO CUT OUR DISCRETIONARY SPENDING.

WE HAVE TO RAISE TAXES.

WE MUST REFORM SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE.

ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU OTHERWISE IS LYING TO YOU AND HARMING OUR FUTURE IN THE PROCESS.

CONGRESS IS LYING TO YOU, AND SO HAVE THE LAST TWO PRESIDENTS. BOTH PARTY PLATFORMS CONTAIN LIES DESIGNED TO KEEP THIS USELESS DEBATE GOING. DEMAND BETTER.