The U.S. is not only the world's biggest economy, it also the world's biggest debtor nation.
Just 10 years ago, the national debt was $6 trillion. Today, it has more than doubled, to $14 trillion.Â
And it was just 10 years ago that the Clinton administration handed off a large surplus to the new president, George W. Bush.Â
Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, says those surpluses were projected to continue. But they didn't.
"We were running deficits in the past decade when we shouldn't have been," she says. "They came from tax cuts that weren't paid for. They came from fighting two wars without paying for them, when normally in our past, we have. They came from the addition of things like the prescription drug program — not paid for — and high growth in government spending in general."
To read this rest of this story click here...
recommend
Facebook
Twitter
bookmark 
print
Comments: 4
Naturally, we will blame the politicians. It's much easier to blame and hate than to solve our problems or to even think about what allows those problems to happen. We have fun blaming. We start out as children blaming our siblings or our friends or anybody. That works often enough that when we become adults we continue the practice. It's always somebody else's fault. We can get angry at them (especially if they are weak and can't do anything to harm us) and that makes us feel better than them. Lot's of fun but it doesn't make things any better for us or anybody else. So our problems get worse and we become even more afraid. The old familiar story.
For an alternative see www.nopom.info which explains and show how to solve our problems.
Think about it. The tax cuts and Medicare Plan D could have been paid for and working fine if not for Bush's getting us into two illegal wars. That's the beginning of the current porblems, that and demanding banks approve sub-prime loans to anyone who asked. (that's one Bush tried to stop but not very much).
The blame for all our problems at this point belongs in the camp of the one political party no one seems to recognize. The Neo Conservative One Worlders. Career Politicians of both parties and their fancifull One World Government have put us in dire straights. That's the purpose of the TEA Party and others who are fighting to restore the United States of America, not a world government.
So the debt has increased by $3.6 trillion over the past two fiscal years. The budget in any president's first year in office is always the product of his predecessor.
The expansion of the Medicare drug program and the two wars have bloated the budget and deficit. Yet, that was made even worse by two rounds of tax cuts. Despite that, the government has now the extended those cuts for two more years.
Everything is done for political reasons. No politician in Washington thinks beyond the two-year election cycle.