The idiotic statement of the day

When it comes to the debt ceiling, I’ll be the first to admit I am not sure what to think. There are many highly respected economic experts on both sides of the aisle with differing opinions about the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd. Some caution that it will cause a global panic while others maintain that we can still utilize the $200 Billion in monthly revenue to service our debt and essential spending while the congress works on bringing our budget back into balance.
So when I heard that Representative Jim Himes was going to be on C-Span to discuss the debt ceiling, I made sure to tune in. You see not only is Jim a Democrat congressman from Connecticut, he also is a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University who after his studies he worked his way up to Vice President at Goldman Sachs. With these credentials I expected some brilliant insight into the intricacies of the federal budget but what I got was “the idiotic statement of the day“.

After Himes stated that spending cuts were necessary if we are to avoid financial collapse a C-Span viewer tweeted in questioning why we need to raise the debt ceiling if we are going to make spending cuts. His answer defies belief.

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That’s right, the Democrats are so insistent on raising the debt ceiling that this Oxford trained financial wizard just said that even if the federal government cut all of the spending we would still have to raise the ceiling. Now I am not an economist but I do know that we take in about $2.6 Trillion a year in revenue and the interest payments on our debt amount to around $250 Billion a year. This would still leave us with well over $2 Trillion to spend before we had to increase the debt ceiling.