A counting clock in New York City showing our national debt at some $12 trillion in April 2010. (Flickr user: My Lil' Rotten)
It's the joke of the week in Capitol Hill: minting a trillion dollar coin to solve our nation's debt crisis. While that's probably unlikely, it very well might be the most agreeable option on the table when it comes to discussing the debt ceiling.
Currently, the national borrowing limit is set at $16.4 trillion. However, that limit needs to be raised in order for the Treasury Department to continue to be able to pay for what Congress has already approved.
If Congress doesn't agree to the increase, the President has warned that the consequences will be "catastrophic." Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have been threatening to demand spending cuts before agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.
Joe Weisenthal, deputy editor of Business Insider, lays out the options for tackling the coming crisis.
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Comments [4]
Here's a story for The Takeaway; if the Obama Administration would get busy on a sensible federal budget that does something about the nation's overspending crisis and our unsustainable deficit spending, instead of wasting precious time on a silly made-for-the-media press boondoggle like Joe Biden's roundtable on gun violence, we might not have to worry about the debt ceiling.
What the President has decided is that he wants to slow-walk any reductions in federal spending. He wants Congress to take all pressure off the budget negotiations by passing a debt ceiling increase, and then sometime later, when it is convenient for the President, talk about federal spending and entitlements, where he disagrees with the President.
Time and time again, this President delays, defers and ignores the U.S House of Representatives -- the people's body; where all revenue bills originate in our government -- on the problem of federal overspending.
When the President says that he's willing to have a conversation on federal spending and the federal debt, the question is when? When and where will you negotiate? What is your position, Mr. President? You say that these kinds of budgeting crises have been much too frequent, it is purely because you won't deal with it, Mr. President.
The day we reach the limits of the current debt ceiling should be the day payroll ceases as well, as well as all other non-essential expenditures for the legislative and executive branches of government and remain that way until the issue is resolved.
And every day that goes by without resolution there's a 30% penalty against their salary and expenditures.
Said penalty will be dispersed throughout the states to offset local costs incurred by the standoff.
Fair is fair.
Peter Jackson will make the continuing saga of good versus evil with a Tolkien inspired movie called "The Trillion Dollar Coin."
The coin could have Saruman on one side and Gandalf on the other.
This coin represents the insanity of our times...It is genius!
Everybody is forgetting that coins have a heads and a tails...So, after we figure out who is on the front, we have to figure out who is at the back end... How about the American people getting kicked in the ass...
If we need a security guard for the trillion dollar coin, I'll do it...I will be flipping it for an eight hour shift
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