he is not my man, just setting the record straight on the discussion at hand


Statistics on raising the debt ceiling is important, when some people pretend it is something new. On the flip side the debt ceiling is an artificial number for how much debt the US is allowed to hold, if the debt ceiling is raised it is because the US needs to owe more then the previous debt ceiling allowed it to owe. So in a way it is meaningless (10 tuple the dept ceiling and all of a sudden you won't need to raise it for a few years and so will be stable for a few administrations- and so if it got raised 1,5 or 10 times is immaterial) but again it does show that ever expanding debt for the US is nothing new which was my simple point.

Even though I agree with you in part "as it is the amount of money the administration is spending that causes debt to increase" the reality is that what is spent is heavily influenced by the debt itself for example the interest for 2011 is $434,131,324,866.27 [Link: treasurydirect.gov]. and add to it some of the capital since every year some bonds/ t-bills mature (and this goes back many administrations/Presidents ago) . It is also heavily influenced by long term contracts that might have been negotiated in previous administrations.


Don't get me wrong, if someone was saying the same thing for Busch's last administration or who ever wins the next one, I would say the same thing.