US gov't shut down at 12:01AM october 1, 2013

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the tea party people are solely responsible for this mess. and you are also by your support of them.

The debt, as you point out, has been building for the past 30 years. The Tea Party Caucus is a relatively new movement. So how can they be solely responsible for 30 years of built up debt when they have only been an organization for about three years?

because they are the tip of the spear of antitax randian-inspired selfishness, which over 3 decades resulted in the development of a minority bunch of politicians who can dictate to the rest of America that they should never have affordable health care - under the thin excuse of the deficit - while conveniently ignoring the deleterious effects of those aforementioned tax-cuts in addition to the disastrous exporting of the bulk of our jobs which together were a one-two punch decimating our national finances- people whose jobs were exported cannot pay the taxes they used to pay, which helped to drain our treasury at the same time the rich were excused from paying the bulk of their taxes. let us just agree to disagree about everything under the sun, ok? you can have your guns, I will stick to my butter. don't read my posts and I will not read yours. sounds fair to me.

Thin excuse of a deficit? You mean to tell me that you think the deficit is not problematic whatsoever? Most sane people would call a $17 trillion debt a huge problem. I reiterate, one must have money in order to spend it. The government has no money and you want them to spend billions more on crappy healthcare.

Also, I suggest you watch Dr. Ben Carson's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast and read his book, America the Beautiful. I think you'll find them informative and thought-provoking.

I have absolutely NO USE for organized religion or for table-pounding religious hypocrites who believe that affordable health care should be strictly a privilege for the rich and powerful. anybody who espouses such is totally alien to me. HSAs are GARBAGE. they do NOT help working class people living from paycheck to paycheck.

That seems very close-minded of you. You are not even willing to give other people's opinions a chance if they don't line up exactly with yours.
And if you watch his speech, you'll see that he agrees that everyone should have access to affordable healthcare but that the debt must be dealt with first. Going through with the ACA would be like putting a band-aid on a serious gunshot wound. It won't hold up for very long without sufficient support. And negative funds simply cannot support it.

I repeat- HSAs are NOT EFFECTIVE for working class folks. PERIOD!! ! the man is a DOCTOR [neurosurgeon, IMHO a primadonna in my experience], a HEALER, and he is OPPOSED to universal health care! what breathtaking hypocrisy! he seems to have forgotten all about the "above all, do no harm" bit. and speaking of "do no harm" the congressional TP doesn't care about what harm they cause the 99%.

[Moved from News and Current Events to PPR]

If you are concerned about being able to spend several billion, you could start here, with "defense" spending:
The Ford Class Aircraft Carrier will cost around $14 billion including research and development, and then the actual cost to construct the carrier itself would be $9 billion.
The total cost to build a Nimitz class aircraft carrier is $8.1 billion (in 2008 U.S. Dollars). A Virginia class submarine costs $5.4 billion (2010). From the 2011 budget: Predator and Reaper Unmanned Aerial System: $1.9 billion. Also from 2011: Something called the Space-Based Infrared System with a price tag of $1.5 billion (you can Google it and see if you think is is worth it). In 2012, the budget set aside $115 billion for continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Homeland Security was granted $58.8 billion in discretionary spending alone.

The US Military has bases in 63 countries (not counting fortified embassies, bases that are labelled as "outposts" or "air strips" due to their smaller size, or military presence on foreign owned military bases). 7 new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries.
There are over 250,000 US military personnel deployed outside of the US, all of whom get extra pay for it. The underlying land surface of foriegn military bases exceeds 30 million acres.

Don't get me wrong, I think the US definitely needs to have a large and fully functional military. I just think that increasing the Defense budget (even after adjusting for inflation) almost every single year since WWII is not sustainable. I also think that it is high time we got our nose out of everyone else's business. I think that would do more to prevent/reduce terror threats than what trying to be the world police "accomplishes."

If you want universal healthcare so badly, move to Canada. They don't have a $17 trillion debt getting in the way of funding it. But as it stands in the US now, we have -$17 trillion. Basic math says you cannot spend a negative amount of money.

No, they are not.

We are in over our heads, if I am going to be taxed to excess to fix this mess, then by God I expect government to be shredded only to what we bring in to operate and pay our debts. Otherwise, you are essentially robbing me to pay someone else.

The governing philosophy is to keep borrowing regardless of revenues and tax, tax, tax. Nobody will volunteer to fix a problem if the problem remains self-perpetuating.

The tea party movement is about government living within its means. Nobody with a brain will keep lending or giving money to someone who will continue to squander it.

The Tea Party is marketed that way, but their most outspoken representatives seem to have no trouble costing the taxpayers billions to make their points. They also seem to have no trouble accusing anyone who isn't a white extremely conservative Christian of being the cause of all problems. I love the idea of reining in government spending, but the Libertarians are much closer to that in reality than the Tea Party.
But then the Libertarians tend to go a little to far to the extreme. You can't just completely eliminate entire agencies overnight without some pretty devastating consequences. It needs to be a carefully planned gradual approach which is not be likely; those in office are only as good as their most recent few years work, leading to a focus on right now and nothing beyond tomorrow morning.

Basic math includes both addition and subtraction. True story.

As long as you include revenue to pay for a policy you can do what you like. PPACA, unlike say the Iraq war, is funded with dedicated taxes.

they just don't want working class folks to have affordable health care, in so many words. they would much rather spend money on guns than butter. must be some macho thing. the budget is just a smokescreen for their imperialist social Darwinist priorities.

The macroeconomics are complex, but pretty intuitive.

The United States dollar is the largest reserve currency in the world, representing something like 65% of all reserves held globally. Obviously, this represents far more currency than would be required to underwrite the US economy alone.

When foreign people and countries buy dollars, it represents increased demand, which drives the value of the dollar up. That enables the Federal Reserve to issue new dollars--to maintain some equilibrium in the dollar's value. The issuance of new currency gives the US government the opportunity to issue new debt (since this is the only mechanism whereby US dollars can be created). So as long as the United States Dollar is the globe's reserve currency, the United States government gets roughly a 1.5% break on its borrowing costs.

At this point, there is no one poised to take over. The Euro zone is in a mess, and none of the other 6 reserve currencies come close to being large enough to make a dent in the dollar's position. So, for now, US borrowing is pretty safe. Is it sustainable indefinitely? Of course not.

At some point, the market will decide that the US dollar is not the best bet, and upward pressure will be placed on other currencies. My bet is the RMB. It'll probably be another 30 to 50 years before that happens, but the day will come, just as it did for sterling.

As for the ACA, it is well within the capacity of the United States to afford. You have a significant fiscal deficit to address, and the USD is not going to finance that indefinitely. But when the time comes, an intelligent combination of tax and fiscal policy choices will be readily achievable, provided that someone has the political will to give effect to it.

thank you for that bit of cold comfort