Mnuchin Says Prioritizing Debt Payments ‘Doesn't Make Sense’

[Swordsmyth]

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ruled out prioritizing U.S. debt payments if Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit and repeated his call for quick action by lawmakers.
“I have no intent on prioritizing” debt payments, Mnuchin told a House Financial Services panel in Washington on Thursday. “That doesn’t make sense. The government should honor all of its obligation and the debt limit should be raised.”
The secretary’s comments come after members of his department called bond traders (https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-07-17/treasury-said-to-reassure-markets-about-secret-debt-ceiling-plan) to assure them the government wouldn’t employ a secret plan written during the Obama administration to make sure debt payments are made, potentially at the expense of salaries for government employees, payments to contractors and other obligations.

More at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-27/mnuchin-says-prioritizing-debt-payments-doesn-t-make-sense?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=bd&utm_campaign=headline&cmpId=yhoo.headline&yptr=yahoo

[timosman]

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/unitedstates

Debt per Citizen - $61,250

[unknown]

Ron Paul: Cancel $1.6 Trillion Fake "Debt" Owed to Federal Reserve (https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/9471-ron-paul-cancel-16-trillion-fake-debt-owed-to-federal-reserve).


Dr. Ron Paul, congressman from Texas and GOP candidate for president in 2012, has appeared on various televised outlets as well as in print, prescribing a treatment plan that he promises will bring a “reprieve” in the debt crisis and take us farther down the path toward ridding ourselves of the Federal Reserve tumor that has for years been sapping our monetary health.

In simple terms, Congressman Paul is recommending that the United States dismiss the $1.6 trillion payment owed by the Treasury to the Federal Reserve.

The American government (and citizens) incurred this “debt” through a crafty bit of sleight of hand on the part of the Federal Reserve, a cabal of men determined to make our freedom disappear.

Paul justifies this seemingly radical response by reminding Americans that the debt owed to the Federal Reserve isn’t real and that it was created by that organization “out of thin air.”

[Marenco]

''I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.''
- Thomas Jefferson

[oyarde]

Why would I care if salaries of govt employees are paid ? Also making the debt payment first, then entitlements would seem to be the logical way for the administration to have a chance to retain power next election . I support Dr Pauls idea of the 1.6 trillion as well .