Should We Lift The Debt Limit Only By As Much Debt As Is Needed To Accommodate Gop Paul Ryan’s Budget?

[Cuddy]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-shining--national-debt-edition/2011/04/20/AFnfSICE_story.html

[chazaiah]

The debt should be zero or negative.   Rock 33 months ago

[Bogdan]

Not. At. All. We should drop that debt ceiling, and drop the spending commensurately, even if that means calling home half the troops we've sent abroad(start with Libya, I say.)   danielpauldavis 33 months ago

[jung-hwa75]

If SS and Medicare are eliminated, there will be no need to raise the debt limit, there will be a surplus to pay off some of that debt.   Katzinjammer 32 months ago

[jung-su]

OK, then my answer is no. We shouldn't lift the debt limit only by as much debt to accomodate OP Paul Ryan's budget. We should lower it to zero. I hold this truth to be self evident.   Rock 33 months ago

[Dominick]

Personally I do not care what anyone of them thinks, All of them them better get together and get this figured out. Dems and rep. are playnig games with all our futures... 2012 is coming up fast for elections   Denjord 33 months ago

[Crosly]

It would be(essentially) impossible not to go further into debt. You could zero out Medicare and Medicaid and still not close it. You'd have to either raise taxes or also end Social Security.That's a serious problem. Cantor and Ryan aren't kidding when they say it's time to fix it. It's hard to take them seriously when their plan also includes tax cuts. That's simply bizarre. Even leaving top tax rates alone would close the debt faster than cutting them. It's unreasonable to criticize Ryan on the grounds of not being able to close the debt immediately. It is reasonable to criticize the plan on the grounds of not closing it fast enough.So... lifting the debt limit by the amount of Ryan's plan isn't a half bad idea. That puts a firm(ish) limit on how much we can spend, which informs the debate over what plan we'll actually go with.Conceivably, we could end Medicare(as Ryan suggests) and raise taxes, which would mean not even needing that much wiggle room. Or we could raise taxes and reform Medicare, which is what Obama has been calling for all along. Obama's plan is itself insufficiently ambitious, though; it's been tuned to be passable rather than closing the debt. It would require another, equally ambitious plan a few years from now. That may or may not be a good idea, because two half-plans(with the intention of saving Medicare as we know it) might be less effective overall than one audacious plan(such as ending Medicare).Still, I'd give Ryan more credit if he weren't simultaneously LOWERING rates on the wealthy. That's simply ridiculous. You might be able to make a case that we have spent too much and the poor will have to suffer. But making the case that the rich will be getting richer because of it... I can't see how anybody considers that a serious idea.   PamPerdue 33 months ago

[fu95]

I suggest we pay our debt and those other things you mentioned and eliminate the unnessary present Government expenditures like the Education Dept., the EPA, the Energy dept., the State Dept., Planned Parenthood, NPR, and Cowboy Poetry subsities.In addition the Government should sell off some of the land it owns in America. It amounts to over 1/3 of the land in America.   Rock 33 months ago