"Both parties are advocating default" - David Stockman

[dellinger63]

Couldn’t agree more. Unlike AIG and General Motors no one will bail the U.S., it will be all up to us and will take both parties to accomplish.

Right now raising taxes or removing the Bush/Obama tax cut extension in an effort to pay down the debt would do nothing but drain personal savings as the money brought in would be spent before the checks cleared on things like wrecking used cars and giving billion dollar aid packages to foreign governments. Taxes, even new taxes are going to have to be a part of paying the debt down. But first some sort of yearly budget cap has to be decided on and then when taxes are raised, 100% of that money would be solely used for paying off the debt. We also have enormous untapped oil reserves on land (not deep in the gulf) that can be harvested and leases could be another painless source of revenue that again 100% would be assigned to paying off the debt. Not to mention the ceasing of economic aid to less than friendly countries who are despicable in their treatment of women, a win-win!

Medicare is a sneak preview of the feature 'Obamacare' and right now the country can't afford it without some safeguards in place like a maximum amount for subsidies, say $5 billion. We need to get economically stable before we start throwing more huge government programs/slices of the budget pie, into the mix.

Simply put, like a sinking ship, we need to plug all the holes before we begin bailing. Obama & Co.'s budget plan of spending to prevent bankruptcy is equivalent to bailing seawater into the ship so it won't come in through the holes. Doesn't work very well, in fact doesn't work at all.