This graph below says it all. The debt mountain is huge and growing quickly.
National Debt and Debt Ceiling
Headline: Thirty years of the debt ceiling in one graph
The one caveat to this graph is that the colors on the bar showing control of the House of Representatives look to be reversed. But that doesn’t distract from its main point: “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.”http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
At any given time, the minority party likes to pretend that the debt is all the majority party’s fault. That’s the whole theory behind the McConnell plan. But every president and congress is paying for the decisions of every previous president and congress. This is, and always has been, a bipartisan affair.
Source: washingtonpost.com
Headline: Moody's suggests U.S. eliminate debt ceiling
Ratings agency Moody's on Monday suggested the United States should eliminate its statutory limit on government debt to reduce uncertainty among bond holders.
The United States is one of the few countries where Congress sets a ceiling on government debt, which creates "periodic uncertainty" over the government's ability to meet its obligations, Moody's said in a report.
"We would reduce our assessment of event risk if the government changed its framework for managing government debt to lessen or eliminate that uncertainty," Moody's analyst Steven Hess wrote in the report.
The agency last week warned it would cut the United States' AAA credit rating if the government misses debt payments, increasing pressure on Republicans and the White House to come up with a budget agreement.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
