OK I'm still confused by this whole debt thing someone help me out?

1) it doesn't remove the threat of default - it postpones it

2) yes, "creditors" are paid first, but who is a creditor? Everyone the government has promised money to, or only those with actual bonds? If anyone does not get paid, it reflects on the government's character and ability to function and keep its promises.

3) We probably are paying some current bills with debt we previously issued. This debt is now maturing and must be either paid off, or replaced with new debt.

4) The president's budget was voted down 97-0 by the Senate earlier this year.

The problem is that at we keep adding new debt to the old, at low interest rates. At some point, the people lending us the money will decide they are less likely to be paid back, and will either stop lending us money (as in Greece), or will demand higher interest, which could eventually swallow up our entire current spending, or more.

This is a major problem; banks won't loan money to anyone or to each other because the banks have major losses due to the mortgage crisis. The mortgage crisis was the result of banks and Fannie and Freddie making loans to people who couldn't afford the loans in the first place. Carter in 1977 and Clinton in 1995 regulated the banks into making these poor loans. The democrat press is causing panic on Wall Street each time there is a company in trouble of folding or when there is a bailout thinking it will help Obama get elected even though it was the democrat party that is responsible for the trouble to start with. Hundreds of billions are being taken out of money markets by scared citizens which further increases the credit crunch. Bush and his economic team knows that something dramatic has to be done to stop the domino effect so they came up with a massive bailout for the banks, etc who have a lot of the bad debt on their books to hopefully stabilize the economy. It has a good shot of doing that if congress can pass it. This issue is very complicated even the democrat leaders in congress didn't understand what was happening until last week when briefed by Bush and company. Congress will either pass the bailout or probably face another great depression in which this country and most of the world will be sucked into.

Whatever you may have heard - this is a matter of BUDGETARY excesses - Everybody wants money - the only way for everyone to get paid NEXT YEAR is to increase the BUDGETARY LIMIT! House and Senate all have favorite ways to spend money - and if so and so gets such and such, then I should get as much as I want too! There is virtually no limit to how much we can spend - because we can produce as much money as we need - notice that your dollar doesn't buy as much as it did, lets say two years ago - that's inflation - also what the real problem is that there are less people working and less people paying taxes, and the expenses keep on going! and what costs 1.00 this week will certainly cost 1.10 next year. Remember when California ran out of money and they started issuing "warrants?" basically IOUs redeemable at a later date? That is what could happen here! Congress is a grumpy group and love nothing more than messing with their citizens heads - but you'll see, it will work out.

I'll take a shot at the first one. If you're about to lose your house because you can't pay the mortgage, you can save it if you can borrow some money to pay it.

Not a great solution, but you've saved your house long enough to have a chance to improve your financial situation. In the case of the US, avoiding default will allow us time to reduce spending and increase revenues.

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What one can "afford" is a function of how much they take in versus how much goes out. As I said, for the US to survive in the long run, spending has to decrease and revenues need to increase. In the meantime, the one thing we can't "afford" is to harm our credit rating.

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Two thumbs down for what I thought was a sensible answer; how disappointing.

Long story short the Washington politicians are making us hate on each other so they can raise taxes so they can keep spending, spending, spending.......

When was the last time one of them had to stay with-in a budget or go with out anything? My point exactly!!!

Basically we've maxed out our credit cards and raising the debt ceiling will allow them to charge the money needed to pay off the other cards. It's really sick. What's worse is that many people apparently can't (or won't) understand this.

it's simple, America is having its sovereignty systematically destroyed by weapons of mass financial destruction

once you get past everything you "learned" since you were a kid, it's really not that difficult to understand!

Obama doesn't understand he needs to reduce the principle and not just pay the interest owed. This is what he learned from his black father probably.

1. Red Herring thrown out by The Marxist Fraud

2. Red Herring thrown out by The Marxist Fraud

3. Red Herring thrown out by The Marxist Fraud

4. Red Herring thrown out by The Marxist Fraud

http://usdebtclock.org/