Debt ceiling: America's budget crisis

[robert.]

Roads and bridges are crumbling.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Roads and bridges are crumbling.

You live in PA, the home of crumbling bridges and lousy roads....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The infrastructure bill, as with most legislation, is just authorization to spend $1.5T over ten years. Until it's spent, it doesn't show up as cash-out-the-door. Theoretically, therefore, it won't hit the budget/debt calculation until it's spent each year. That's just $150B/year for ten years (although I suspect it might be front-end loaded, entailing higher spending in the earlier years of the bill). Government bookkeeping, or fund accounting, is quite different from how individuals and corporations keep their books. Sometimes it seems counterintuitive.

Counterintuitive might a polite description!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

BTW, Chevron just reported in a $37 billion profit for the past year (remember those high gas prices, anyone?)....

But are they going to invest in increased production? No. They have a $75 billion plan to buy back their stock.

So why does the Fed Gov't subsidize oil companies (was ~$40 billion/yr)?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Meanwhile, the Republicans(!) are proposing to strike your Federal income tax and replace it with a Nat'l sales tax (on top of the state one)......starting at a mere 23%....but it would be variable.....upwards.....since it seems that 30% might be needed to replace the income from the Federal income tax.

Rep. Earl Carter (R-GA) formally introduced bill Fair Tax Act on Jan. 10 by Carter.....as of yesterday it had 23 co-sponsors.

[robert.]

Republicans adding a tax and democrats sending tanks overseas. Have the parties flipped their stances? f you get rid of employees paying income tax. Will they see larger paychecks? 23 percent is a high mark. Might just be a way to shoot for 2 percent. One would think that we see a federal sales tax soon.
If we send tanks to Ukraine. Is that declaring war on Russia? Can the president do that? Without congressional approval? Hold onto your hats. This will be a turbulent year. Nobody appears to have a game plan laid out.

[healey36]

A national sales tax, if significant, could cause folks to stop buying so much stuff. For a consumer-spending-based economy, sounds disastrous.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Republicans adding a tax and democrats sending tanks overseas. Have the parties flipped their stances? f you get rid of employees paying income tax. Will they see larger paychecks? 23 percent is a high mark. Might just be a way to shoot for 2 percent. One would think that we see a federal sales tax soon.

Brookings has already provided an estimate that we'd need at 30% national sales tax to replace the funding generated by the current income tax.

If we send tanks to Ukraine. Is that declaring war on Russia? Can the president do that? Without congressional approval? Hold onto your hats. This will be a turbulent year. Nobody appears to have a game plan laid out.

No, yes, and yes.

Turbulent? Been there, done that for 6 years now -- it's the new normal.