Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics
I don’t get it, I wish I could understand, but I just don’t get it. More than willing to admit, not the sharpest knife, like to think not as dim as a flashlight with weak batteries.
Now it is the Republicans turn to doctor the books
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent a letter this week to Congress warning that the United States is about to reach its legal borrowing limit by next Thursday.
That's because the current debt ceiling suspension expires at the end of Wednesday, March 15.
Since Congress will almost certainly not act in time to raise the ceiling or extend the suspension, Mnuchin will have to start an official juggling act to ensure the country can continue to keep paying all its bills in full and on time. After the current suspension expires, the debt ceiling should reset a little north of $20 trillion next Thursday.
"At that time, Treasury anticipates that it will need to start taking certain extraordinary measures in order to temporarily prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations," Mnuchin wrote in a March 8 letter to leaders in the House and Senate.
He didn't specify how long "temporarily" will last. The Bipartisan Policy Center and Congressional Budget Office, however, have recently estimated that all the measures combined are likely to be exhausted sometime this fall.
If lawmakers haven't acted by then, the Treasury Department will no longer be able to pay all the country's bills because it will have run out of borrowing authority. And there won't be enough revenue plus cash on hand to cover all legal obligations.
Those obligations -- approved over the years by both parties -- include paying bondholders, federal contractors, Social Security recipients, tax filers owed refunds and a vast array of other parties for services rendered and benefits due.
That's why it's wrong to assert, as some do, that raising the debt ceiling is a "license to spend more." It's more like a license to continue paying what the country already owes.
Defaulting on any set of obligations could hurt the economy and markets to varying degrees, depending on who gets stiffed and for how long.
Typically no party in the majority wants that kind of crisis on their watch. So it's not surprising that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday told Politico that Congress would raise the debt ceiling. "The government will not default," McConnell said.
But that doesn't mean the path will be easy. Conservatives or Democrats -- seeking leverage -- may decide to make any number of demands in exchange for their support to raise or suspend the ceiling.
In any case, lawmakers will have several opportunities between now and the fall to deal with the issue. They have to pass two budgets -- one for the rest of this fiscal year and one for next year. And, if they get far enough on health reform or tax reform, they could work in a provision in those bills.
And Mnuchin very well may prod them again.
"As I said in my confirmation hearing, honoring the full faith and credit of our outstanding debt is a critical commitment," he wrote. "I encourage Congress to raise the debt limit at the first opportunity so that we can proceed with our joint priorities."
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The Associated Press, Bloomberg News, The Washington Times & Obama White House budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell are feeding We The People misleading information! Why a smattering of truth with some serious misrepresentation of the facts?
The Debt did not increase from May 1, 2013 until October 18, 2013 because the Treasury Department utilized “extraordinary measures” to keep the numbers off the books; at which time there was a considerable increase in the National Debt.
Extraordinary Measures Round 1
October 17, 2013 National Debt $16.747 Trillion
October 18, 2013 National Debt $17.075 Trillion
Over $328 Billion increase in 24 hours.
Extraordinary Measures Round 2
National Debt
10/30/2015 $18,152,981,685,747.52
11/02/2015 $18,492,091,120,833.99
11/03/2015 $18,532,338,091,711.48
11/04/2015 $18,532,854,382,821.74
11/05/2015 $18,609,800,070,328.73
The Deficit for that week $456,819,000,000 ($456 Billion)
If you run the Debt up but keep the numbers off the books for 169 days Round 1 and 220 days for Round 2 that is called “cooking the books”. You can attempt to feed We The People a line of crap; it might be legal, but very unethical.
If The Associated Press, Bloomberg News, The Washington Times & White House budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell thought fiscal year 2013 was good because the country only went backwards $680 Billion then the first month of fiscal year must be absolutely hideous; the deficit for the 31 days of October was over $408 Billion, and by December 31, 2013 had risen to $613 Billion. This is what happens when the books are cooked and people are disingenuous.
December 31, 2013 National Debt $17,351,970,784,950.15
September 30, 2013 National Debt $16,738,183,526,697.32
That is a 92 day Deficit of $ 613,787,158,270.83
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Morgan Brittany
Aug 19, 2013 Town Hall Finance.com
If I ran my finances like the Federal government I would either be bankrupt or in jail. It never ceases to amaze me how creatively corrupt these people are.
A little known story that got absolutely no coverage from the mainstream media surfaced last week about the reports from the Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service. The FMS reports both the Daily Treasury Statement and the Monthly Treasury Statement. According to these reports the federal deficit rose by $98 billion dollars in July, but somehow the federal government’s debt remained exactly the same at $16,699,396,000,000 for the whole month.
Hmmm…how does that happen? Well, it seems that Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew got a bit creative and magically decided to stop the addition of more debt from showing up in the reports. Wow, don’t we all wish we could do that? Let’s say at the beginning of the month our bank balance was $3000. Throughout the month we spend money, write checks, go out to dinner, and then magically at the end of the month our bank balance is exactly the same as when we started! $3000! Sounds good until you realize that the only way to achieve that is to “cook the books”.
When you delve deeper into what the Treasury Department did, you see that there is a magic number of $16,699,421,000,000 to reach the debt limit set in a law passed by Congress and signed by the King himself. Isn’t it odd that the number reached when the clock stopped ticking was about $25 million below the limit?
If the clock had continued to click, by the end of July it would have gone over the legal debt limit and would have been in violation of the law. However, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for July, even though money was spent, their reports didn’t show a change in the debt by even one penny. Isn’t that the definition of “cooking the books”?
When it became apparent that the debt was going to exceed the limit, Jack Lew sent a “cover my behind” letter to Speaker John Boehner explaining that he was going to take “extraordinary measures” to prevent the Treasury from exceeding the legal limit on the Federal debt. This massaging of the numbers has been going on for months now. Why doesn’t Boehner ask any questions and why does he let Lew and this administration get away with manipulating the numbers?
This is just another way to circumvent Congress. Lew knows that he doesn’t have to explain anything, he just does it. There will be no pushback from Boehner or Congress. To them, this type of juggling figures is perfectly normal. So Lew says that these “extraordinary measures” will provide another $260 billion to give them headroom, but who knows if that hasn’t been spent already?
Do they really think we won’t notice that the clock stopped ticking? Well, some of us anyway. If this is their MO, “cooking the books” and manipulating the numbers at their whim, how much is the debt really?
Let’s just call it what it is. It is a blatant lie to the American people about how much trouble we are in. They can play these games for awhile, but sooner or later this whole thing is going to implode.
Morgan Brittany
Politichicks.tv@MorganBrittany4