Debt ceiling: Why it is making me bat shit crazy.

Recently, there has been all this hullabaloo over increasing the debt ceiling in the US. I have honestly been trying to avoid this like an infectious disease. However, the debt ceiling sickness has spread to pandemic levels thus it has become impossible to avoid.

Everywhere you turn, no matter what news outlets you read/watch, everyone, everywhere is talking about the debt limit pseudo-crisis in the U.S. So I figure the best defense to this sickness, is falling victim to it (or in my case talking about it), in the hopes I will build up immunity and never catch it again.

I do understand the concern over increasing or not increasing the debt limit, this concern is natural. However, what bothers me the most over the debt ceiling debate is the propaganda and scare tactics used not only by the media but by our own leaders. When I say by our own leaders, democrats are not the only culprits!

Let me start by saying first and foremost, America has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Currently, gross domestic product in the US is around $14.55 trillion. Not too shabby considering the GDP of the U.S. is the highest of ANY single sovereign nation. If you wish to lump together the European Union's combined GDP, then U.S. would be the second highest. As of today, July 30th, 2011, the national debt stood roughly at $14.66 trillion. This means U.S. national debt is 99.25% of GDP. Though honestly, many estimates have concluded that debt in actual terms is well over 100% of GDP.

Currently in fiscal year 2011, total annual revenue is project as roughly $4.5 trillion. For this same year, total government spending amounts to about $6.2 trillion, This would mean the annual budget deficit for 2011 is some where in the neighborhood of $1.7 trillion. Wow, expensive stuff that can add to our nations debt quickly. With debt like this left to it's own devices, would absolutely require an increase to the debt ceiling.

Boehner and Reid have both proposed bills to help with the nation's debt and debt ceiling dilemmas. Both Boehner and Reid's bills suck. In my opinion they are hardly a drop in the bucket. Honestly, both bills are practically identical. To me voting on either would be like voting, would rather contract Syphilis or Herpes? They both are equally awful, both are STDs but are different diseases. Here is what I mean:

[1] When excluding spending on both wars, both bills roughly cut spending by $900 billion. Boehner's cuts- $917 billion, Reid's cuts- $927 billion.

[2] To break this down further, Boehner's bill would cut discretionary spending by $756 billion and save $156 billion in interest on the debt. Reid's bill are $752 billion and $153 billion. Not much of a difference here either.

[3] Both Reid and Boehner are supporting similar increases in the debt ceiling. Boehner's bill would increase the ceiling by $2.5 trillion with a total of $2.7 trillion in cuts. Reid's bill would raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion, with $2.2 trillion in debt reduction. Again, not one is not too far off from the other.

Okay, now for what makes Syphilis different from Herpes:

Boehner's bill would only raise the debt ceiling twice. A first debt limit increase would be $900 billion. The second debt limit increase, and the real doozy, would only occur after congress enacts a balanced budget amendment.

Reid's bill would immediately raise the debt ceiling by $416 billion. Then the debt ceiling would be raised two more times after this both at $1 trillion each.

Solution? Yes, I have one and it does not even require a debt limit increase at all. My annual budget would be as follows:

• Social Security- $0.7 trillion
• Medicare- $0.6 trillion
• Education- $0.7 trillion
• Defense-  $0.5 trillion
• Welfare-  $0.3 trillion
• Miscellaneous- $1.1 trillion 
• Total government spending for the year- $3.9 trillion

I can hear the moans and groans now. "This is peanuts, in which one could almost equate this to an austerity budget." Austerity budget you say? Wow, I wasn't informed of these austerity measures back in 2003 when this was our actual government spending. :-D Government spending in which was FUNDING 2 WARS, just as we are today.

 I mentioned earlier that direct government revenues are currently at $4.5 trillion for 2011 without any tax increases. If we applied the spending levels I mentioned, which were the same levels from 2003, we would have a budget surplus of roughly $600 billion dollars for the year. If we managed to maintain this surplus for 24 years, and if we stopped borrowing which would keep our national debt the same, we could completely pay off the whole $14.66 trillion national debt, without doing a anything additional.

Also, to speed up the process of paying off the national debt, the government has tons of assets it could sell. For starters, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has almost 727 million barrels of crude oil. The current price of crude oil as of today is $95.86 a barrel. If these barrels were to be sold today, the sale would total around $70 billion.

Also, the Outer Continental Shelf has an estimated 59 billion barrels of crude oil. I know obtaining this oil would be very costly and would require a lot of effort. However, the government could sell this land for a substantial amount to companies who would love to drill for this oil. This should surely produce a lot of revenue.

Another thing, the U.S. government has a ton of property and buildings. I read a report in Reason that the federal government owns 14,000 buildings and structures that were simply considered excess. There are even 55,000 that were underutilized, or simply not utilized at all! Those can also go. ;o)

Debt ceiling debate, so many common sense solutions, yet, so little common sense to implement them.