(Explain this to Grandma. Or for that matter, your kids. Go ahead. – promoted by Colorado Pols)
I feel rather sorry for Cory Gardner getting all the attention for sponsoring extreme bills. So let me direct your attention to H.R. 421 – “To require that the Government prioritize all obligations on the debt held by the public in the event that the debt limit is reached.”
Doug Lamborn is one of only 15 co-sponsors of this bill.
Just what does the bill aim to do, though? Isn’t all U.S. debt held “by the public”?
As it turns out, no. There’s one very important bit of government debt that isn’t considered “held by the public” – the “IOUs” on the Social Security Trust Fund, valued in the trillions of dollars. These are the funds Al Gore wanted put “in a lock box”, which maintain the security of millions of Americans in their old age. (Actually, there is one other government-held bit of debt that gets lumped in here – veterans benefits have a fund apparently maintained in the same way.)
This bill, then, proposes to pay our externally held debt – a bit under half of which is owned by foreign governments – before paying the U.S. public which has invested its working-class tax dollars into Social Security Insurance. The message: China, Japan, and other governments deserve our money more than U.S. citizens.
If anyone has any doubts about the pre-ordained vote to extend the SSI employee tax cut, it seems pretty obvious that at least Doug Lamborn and 15 of his closest House buddies, along with former Club For Growth President turned Senator Pat Toomey and his 18 Senate co-sponsors, are itching for an extension of the cuts, repayment of the fund highly optional. They want Social Security DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.
Thanks, Rep. Lamborn – but no thanks. This is out of touch with what Americans want.
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Wow, this is so prescient of Rep. Lamborn to put this in place on the off chance that we’ll reach the debt limit.
We’ll just print fiat money until we choke on it.
If the government has X dollars to spend, and X+Y dollars in debt, do we pay the taxpayers the money they paid in and were promised first (as is the current law), or do we pay our foreign and corporate debt first (as Lamborn and friends propose?
Which one?
We need to get our debt under control. I want to be the first to join with him in instituting a 70% income tax on all income over 1 million dollars. The time has come to pay off the debt.
ArapaGOP – you and me brother!
though the actual choing is probably best avoided.
a) raise taxes
b) cut spending
c) inflate our debt away
d) grow out of it
e) a) and b) only
f) a), b) and c) but not d)
g) a) , b) c) and d)
h) default and hyper inflation
i) something no economy has done, and no economist has thought of.
You choose.
Seems to be the only solution that is offered. Maybe it just might dawn on someone to tie our tax policy to our debt. They don’t seem to have any trouble tieing the debt to expenses once they sell our income to their campaign contributors.
You sound surprised. Why is that?