Rudy Park by Darrin Bell and Theron Heir for July 28, 2011

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    bdaverin  over 13 years ago

    Ah, Tragedy of the Common Dumbarse, AKA Tea Party Economic Theory!

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    mustangmike53  over 13 years ago

    Yeah, stupid Tea Party. Just because 42 cents of every dollar the Feds spend is for interest on the trillions they’ve already borrowed doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep borrowing and spending more. Dumbasses.

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    JavaJim  over 13 years ago

    For 2011, total federal spending is estimated at 3.8 trillion dollars ($3,818,819 Million). The interest to be paid is $206,688 million. That means that 5.4 cents of every dollar is on loan interest, not 42 cents as mustangmike claims. Hey, he was only off by about a factor of 8…

    Interest spending as a percentage of total government revenue is actually historically low— at its lowest levels since WWII. In comparison, interest spending was 10.1% of the total budget for the first year Reagan was in office, and climbed to 14.8% for his last year.

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    baileydean  over 13 years ago

    Thanks for giving updated and correct numbers. It’s always better to work with factual data rather than Fox-fiction.

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    mysticturner  over 13 years ago

    JavaJim got the spending estimate right. His number for interst spending is wrong however. From October 2010 to June 2011 the interest paid (per treasury department site @ http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm ) is $385,871,949,498.62 so far. Thus we’ve already spent 10.1% of the estimated 2011 expenses on interest and we still have 3 months left to go for the slime to crawl around and manipulate the numbers. And do it without a budget.

    What we should learn here is that everyone with the pulpit has an agenda and they will twist the numbers to thier advantage. They are all liars. All politicians. They can only be trusted to not be lying if they have had two verifiable autopsies performed upon themselves while having had these procedures done live on TV and the internet. And the remains of these two autopsies were burned in public view on the Washington mall.

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    JavaJim  over 13 years ago

    The number I provided was from table 6.1 from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/It is the estimated 2011 NET interest expense for the federal government (the federal government also earns interest which helps to offset the interest on the debt).

    You can argue which number is the fairer representation of the impact of our national debt, but I wasn’t trying to misrepresent anything.

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    Hunter7  over 13 years ago

    At work today we were trying to figure out just how much is a billion dollars. Then a trillion. Simple method – add three zeros to 1 million for the billion. Add another 3 zeros for the trillion. But how much is that really? Don’t know. I only know my dollar is now worth $1.06 US. Shopping Time!

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