re: Looks like the cocksuckers in DC may have reached a deal

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Not sure if I agree with you on this. US GDP includes government spending. If you borrow $100k do you count that as income? I know its popular to compare debt to GDP but it doesn't hold up to reason.

Total domestic GDP also has to fund all private debt as well so if you're going to use this as a benchmark you should include private and federal US debt. That puts your percentage close to 700%. Otherwise your comparing apples to oranges.

But debt service is really the issue here. If rates revert back to the mean we will have to borrow to just to pay our interest as our debt rolls over. That's insolvency.

To me this is a pretty big deal.

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That's not the point i was trying to make, i was paring down your point about the "unprecedented" 16+ trillion in debt, the point about outstanding debt as a percentage of GDP isn't to say "we are only at X% of GDP", but rather to explain that in the course of history, these debt levels have been seen before and it was coincidentally immediately after the worst economic depression of the century, which is similar (although to a more severe extent) to our current situation.

Oddly enough we are on the same side of this issue that we are in trouble fiscally and need to make some serious changes (entitlement reform for starters). But i think it's not as ridiculously precarious of a situation as the tea party would have you believe. If it were truly as perilous, then we wouldn't have a AA+ rating with a stable outlook (and yes, i understand we were downgraded).

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Mitch McConnell got a $2B deal for a dam in KY as part of this new agreement but the Tea Party is the problem

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May not have been the best timing, but building stuff like roads and damns is what the government does. I'm not as up in arms about a dam in KY as I am the entitlement/welfare abuse. It's like every time I go to the grocery store somebody's in line in front of me w/ an EBT card buying higher quality food than I have. Working folks are sick and tired of it.

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Oddly enough we are on the same side of this issue

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Agreed. I really don't see any solution either. Any way you cut it, somebody is going to have to campaign and win on a platform of taking "stuff" away from people for the overall better good. I don't see that happening without a total collapse.

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They are the NEW gop.

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FIFY...


better get on board...the tea party is the peoples answer to the moderate republicans we have been forced to support lately that simply do the same things as the dems just wearing a different hat...frick the establishment GOP...they are just as much a part of the problem as Obama/Reid/Pelosi is...

Nah I'm good. I don't subscribe to extremism, but to each his own.

Nothing "extreme" about going back to Conservative principles. The GOP is moving further and further left, so if a Conservative stays put, they will gradually appear more and more extreme.

I'm not extreme. I'm grounded in reality with a conscience and an understanding of the human condition.

How about smaller government and a balanced federal budget to start?

Most people (apparently) voted for the opposite in the past few elections.

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How about smaller government and a balanced federal budget to start?

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That's not extereme at all. Sounds pretty moderate to me. most ppl with a brain can agree to those things.

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So, why has government gotten bigger and more intrusive and we haven't had a balanced federal budget since the 1990's. (Which...BTW....was BS too because we weren't funding for the huge future liabilities that everyone knew was coming with Medicare and SS.)

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Nah I'm good. I don't subscribe to extremism, but to each his own.

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The Democrap party mainstream is further to the extreme than the tea party.