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National Debt Policy
The national debt as I write this paper is over 17.4 trillion dollars. This number is increasing minute by minute, and is headed towards financial ruin. The national government needs a mandatory balanced budget. This is an issue in today’s politics that needs to be solved otherwise it is going to have a major negative impact on future generations.
Since President Barack Obama took office in 2008, the federal government debt has nearly doubled. “Recent progress toward reducing the annual budget deficit is welcome, yet federal debt is still project to increase 50 percent over the next decade under existing policies.” (The Heritage Foundation). Debt is not a new problem for America. “As you can see from the graph below (Figure 1), the debts that the American Revolutionary War brought were $75,463,476.52. Over the following years, the debt grew. Under President Andrew Jackson, the debt was shrank to zero, but grew to millions soon after.”(Bureau of Public Debt). He called the debt a “national curse.” World War II also brought debt, and it briefly shrank after the end of the Cold War. “In the 1970’s, the national debt more than doubled from $366 billion to $829 billion. In the 1980’s, it more than tripled from $829 billion to $2.9 trillion. And in the 1990’s, the debt almost doubled again from $2.9 trillion to $5.6 trillion.”(History of the National Debt). By 2009, the national debt was 10.3 trillion dollars. Society has become immune to what 1 trillion dollars is. To put this in perspective, Christ was born over 2,000 years ago. If an individual were to spend 1 million dollars a day since the birth of Christ, that spending spree still would not account for 1 trillion dollars. Our debt accounts to 17 trillion....
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Works Cited
"Borrowing and the Federal Debt." National Priorities Project. N.p., 2014. Web. 27 Apr.
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"Bureau of the Public Debt: Our History." Bureau of the Public Debt: Our History. United
States Department of Treasury, 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Dubay, Curtis. "Tax Reform Is about Economic Growth." The Heritage Foundation. N.p.,
2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Halterman, Kevin. Personal interview. 27 April. 2014.
"History of the National Debt." The National Debt Crisis RSS. N.p., 2012. Web. 27 Apr.
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Pomerleau, Kyle. "The High Burden of State and Federal Capital Gains Tax Rates." Tax
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Tax Revenue." Center for American Progress. N.p., 9 Jan. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
In his First Report on Public Credit, Alexander Hamilton discusses the current financial situation of the United States and, as a response, proposes a plan to take care of the debt accrued from the Revolutionary War. Hamilton 's address tells the story of a significantly indebted newfound nation in desperate need of financial reorganization. He first discusses the strain that could be placed on public credit from public engagements and that the expensive engagement of war against Britain was the price to pay for liberty. Subsequently, he delivers his plan, which focused on the full payment of foreign loans, redemption of bonds (which would create new debt, but nonetheless establish good federal credit), and the assumption of individual state
This deficit has to do with having responsible leader who are willing to increase awareness and make beneficial changes in the nation. In my opinion, the federal debt is a serious threat to the US that must be politically address whenever possible. I believe that the candidates of the 2016 presidential election should make this issue one of the top priorities to discuss and to dictate a considerable amount of work to fix it. That is because the worse the federal debt is, the worse the future would be to the nation. Also, voters must be well educated about this issue in order to shape their decision in voting for the candidate that seems most powerful and confident about this problem. Solving this problem may be difficult and would take time and so much effort. Therefore, the changes and solution must be on both a national and individual levels as
Sovereign lending, throughout history, has been marked by occurrences of partial default and repudiation by governments of all kind; from medieval princes to dictators to democratic regimes. In the 1970s lending to lesser-developed countries led to the rescheduling and partial defaults in the 1980s. Even the sustainability of the debt of nations such as Belgium, Canada, Italy and even the United States is not free from suspect.
... The Web. The Web. 17 Apr. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
N.p., 1 Apr. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Web. The Web. The Web.
However the interest we pay on our nation 's debt is very small compared to the overall budget. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities only 7% of the total budget is spent on interest which is relatively low compared to things like social security which took up 24% of the budget in 2014 (Policy Basics). As long as the United States can continue to keep the interest rates low the debt will continue to be a begin threat. If the creditors of the U.S. were to spike their interest rates, America would be in trouble, however America has fairly good credit, and it should remain that way unless there is another scare like the government shutdown in 2011 (Riley). Overall the threat of the nation debt is a very minute problem in the grand scheme of things. According to The Richest, only five nations in the entire world are completely debt free, which is astounding when you consider that there are about 195 countries in the entire world (Mathers; How Many). These figures show how extremely difficult it is for a country to run without having a certain amount of debt, and America having debt should not be a concern. America is not even in the top ten countries whose debt make up the majority of their GDP (Country List). Which means that at the moment American’s should not be overly
Every day in New York City, hundreds of people walk past a huge digital billboard with giant numbers across its face. Each person who walks past this billboard sees a slightly different arrangement of numbers, growing larger every second. This board is the National Debt Clock, representing the over 14 trillion dollars currently owed by the United States. While some people claim that the national debt is caused by the falling economy, most maintain that the debt itself causes the poor economy (Budget Deficits 2007). Rising debt leads to higher interest and investment rates, and cuts into our national savings. Ignoring the national debt leaves the major burden of paying it off to later generations, while meanwhile allowing our country’s economy to further drop and our dependency on other nations to rise.
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U.S Federal Deficit and Debts:Understanding the history and context. (2011, November 1). Utah Foundation. Retrieved January 25, 2014, from http://www.utahfoundation.org/img/pdfs/rr7
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Debt: a word that seems to strike fear in the hearts of Americans. Unfortunately, that fear is being faced. Most of the people who lived through the Great Depression have a distrust for banks and credit cards. These people learned from trusting the bank with large amounts of money, and now go to extreme measures to protect their money. In 2008, a similar recession hit the United States and caused many people to lose money. Credit card debt continually increased throughout the 20th and 21st century. However, credit card debt decreased greatly after the recession of 2008 because Americans stopped spending freely, similar to the 1930s. It is commonly believed that people would be wiser spenders after the recession of 2008, but now in 2015, credit card debt has actually increased almost back to what it was in 2007.
Veldhuis, Neil. “Beyond our means: Government debt tops $1.2-trillion and spending is still rising.” Financial Post. National Post, 16 May 2013. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.