(Newswire.net — October 12, 2013) Washington , D.C. —
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called a Democratic plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling without addressing its trillions of dollars in debt “unacceptable”.
McConnell stated “We’ve got a $17 trillion debt now. We’ve got a debt that’s as big as our economy, which makes us look a lot like a western European country. It’s unacceptable — and the American people oppose raising the debt ceiling unless we do something about the debt. That’s our continuing goal here in the Senate.”
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid devised a plan to bring to a vote on Saturday legislation that would raise the nation’s borrowing limit with no provisions on cutting America’s debt. The Democratic proposal that would suspend the debt ceiling through Dec. 31, 2014, with no policy conditions. That would push the next debt-limit fight into 2015, past next year’s congressional elections.
McConnell lashed back at the plan. “Senator Reid is going to try to raise the debt ceiling $1 trillion without doing anything about the debt. I don’t think there will be a single Republican that supports that — and that’ll be enough to defeat that particular approach.”
There has been confusion among the people over the terms “debt ceiling” and “debt”. The difference is subtle.
The debt ceiling currently sits at $16.69 trillion and is the amount of money the U.S. Treasury Department can borrow to pay the expenses that Congress has already incurred.
The nation’s debt is the amount that the federal government owes to creditors, currently at $16.7 trillion.
Definitions aside, that is a whole heck of a lot of money! Nearly 17 trillion dollars. 17 with twelve zeros behind it looking like $17,000,000,000,000.
To pay back one trillion dollars, at the rate of one dollar per second, would take 31,688 years. And now you need to multiply that by seventeen.
Reid’s proposal would place the United States on par with several heavily indebted countries in Europe such as Germany, with $5.67 trillion in debt; Italy, whose debt exceeds $2.49 trillion; Spain, with $2.39 trillion in debt; and Greece, whose debt totals more than $546.92 billion.
Who is the biggest holder of U.S. notes?
China – carrying a staggering $1.28 trillion, according to The Washington Post.
“That, of course, isn’t going to pass,” McConnell said of the Reid proposal. “That’ll be defeated overwhelmingly by Republicans.”
Senate Republicans and Democrats are now in negotiations now on legislation that would reopen the federal government, which has been shut down for 11 days, and raise the debt ceiling.
On Friday, President Obama rejected the latest proposal offered by House Speaker John Boehner that would link a short-term increase in the debt ceiling to further negotiations on the budget.
The president had met with Boehner and House Republicans on Thursday, and, while rejecting that key provision, said that he and Boehner had both agreed in a telephone conversation earlier Friday afternoon that “we should all keep talking,” a Boehner spokesman said.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government will have $30 billion along with incoming revenue to pay its bills if the debt ceiling is not raised. It would, however, start missing scheduled payments — including benefits, salaries, and interest — between Oct. 22 and Oct. 31.
While everyone agrees that the federal shutdown should end immediately, “it should end on terms that include neither raising taxes nor increasing spending,” McConnell said. “That’s my hope and aspiration.”
My thought as well…