Public Service Announcement

If you've been paying attention there has been a great deal of chatter about raising the debt ceiling this week. It may seem complicated but it's actually pretty simple.

The debt limit (debt ceiling) is the total amount of money that the United States government is authorized to borrow to pay for existing obligations.  This includes the obvious stuff such as Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and much more.

In simple terms the debt ceiling permits borrowing for obligations already incurred by all the  prior Congresses and presidents

Since 1960, Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.

If the U.S. government cannot pay its bills, millions of Americans would be affected with the obvious impacts. Social Security payments would stop.  The salaries of our troops, all other federal employees along with veteran and pension payments would cease.  Millions of Americans on food assistance would see benefits stop and previously-issued government bonds would go into default and become worthless.

Under a worse case scenario, such a default could cause interest rates to soar, stock prices to plummet, send the economy back into recession along with the loss of  billions of dollars of growth and millions of jobs. 

It would be a really bad shit show.

So don't be a turkey and fall for the fake BS you'll be served on Facebook and from sketchy media outlets.  I recommend popcorn, a glass of wine and enjoying the drama......